Author Profile: Samanta Schweblin is an Argentine Spanish – language author.
Name: Samanta Schweblin
Timeline:
2014 – Fever Dream
2008 – Mouthful of Birds
2018 – Little Eyes
2016 – Granta #7: Service
2020 – Little Eyes A Novel
Background: Samanta Schweblin is born in 1978 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She completed her education in Film Studies at the University of Buenos Aires. She resides in Berlin. Samanta Schweblin has published a novel, three collections of short stories, besides which she has published stories in magazines and anthologies. Her movies include Benavidez’s Case, Killing a Dog and Mariposas.
Genre: Novel and short stories.
Literary Contributions: Distancia de Rescate (lit.Rescue distance) her first novel was translated into English as Fever Dream which won the Tigre Juan Award in 2015. It was also nominated for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
She published her first book, El nucleo del Disturbio (The Nucleus of Disturbances) in 2002. The book won the first place at the Harold Conti National Contest and an award from Argentina’s National Fund of the Arts.
Samanta Schweblin was included in the anthologies Cuentos Argentinos (Siruela, España, 2004), La joven guardia (Norma, 2005), La joven guardia (Norma, 2005), Una terraza propia (Norma, 2006), Quand elles se glissent dans la peau d’un homme (Éditions Michalon, Francia, 2007), among others.
Her collection of short stories, Mouthful of Birds won the Casa de las Americas award in 2008. Sierte casas vacias (Seven Empty Houses) her third collection of short-stories was published in 2015.
In 2009, the London-based quarterly newspaper published the English translation of her story, Killing a Dog, in the Summer 2009 issue. Translations of her stories have also been published in the Granta and The New Yorker. Samanta Schweblin was selected as one of the 22 best writers in Spanish below the age of 35 years, by Granta magazine. She has been nominated again for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019 for the English translation of Mouthful of Birds.
Unique Stylistic Features: Fever Dream is a terrifying and brilliant debut of Samanta Schweblin which evolves like a hallucination. A revenant child confronts a sick woman, in a dialogue which combines fears about agricultural abuse by big business with a rural society’s superstitions.
She has won many awards for her work which has been translated in more than twenty languages including Portuguese, German, Swedish, English, Serbian and Italian.