Mariana Enríquez Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Mariana Enriquez is a social communication and journalism degree holder who went to the Argentinian National University of La Plata. She currently makes a living as a deputy editor of the culture and arts section of Pagina/12 newspaper.

The author was born and brought up in the suburbs of Buenos Aires which is popularly known as Conurbano. The Lanus neighborhood where he grew up was a place where there were no intellectual or literary influences.

It was a place that had many factories that were being shut down as she grew up, which meant there were tough times. The working-class neighborhood had nothing remotely resembling beautiful nature as it was quite ugly and tough.

Fortunately for Enriquez, her parents were avid readers and their home had a massive collection of books. They had everything from South American, Argentinian, American, and European literature.
From Edgar Allan Poe to Capote to Garcia Marquez, she had everything she could have wanted to read. While she was not restricted in any way, she used to like the dark and weird stuff as she found that these took her to more interesting and prettier places.

The time during which Mariana Enriquez was born and brought up played a significant role in what she would become.

She was born in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, during a time of extreme economic and political instability as the country was under a military dictatorship.

It was an incredibly violent dictatorship though atrocities were conducted in a very hush-hush way. During this time, thousands were killed and tortured but most of the populace did not know of this.
Many people that lived in those times still do not know the extent of the happenings of that time. While the military was not shooting people in the streets, they would kidnap and take people to clandestine detention centers.

Their actions resulted in a lot of uncertainty and fear as no one knew what would happen to them next. It was not until 1983 that statesman and lawyer Raul Alfonsin was elected that these things started coming out.

Enriquez who lived in those times saw firsthand people close to her such as neighbors and friends going missing for opposing the regime. She experienced anxieties and struggles and found inspiration in that for her works.

In her works, she invites Argentinians and the world at large to learn and understand the dark experiences of those times.

Even though Mariana Enriquez did not have many literary or intellectual influences in her neighborhood growing up, there has always been great enthusiasm for storytelling in Argentina.

She believes that it all comes from the dark history of the country whose ghosts often inspire storytelling. The author was an eyewitness to several economic crises in her lifetime which is always a good incentive.

While she published her debut novel as a twenty-one-year-old, she did not know if she wanted to pursue such a career path. It happened that a big publisher was looking for a work written on a young theme by someone around her age group.

The publishers were introduced to her through a series of weird connections. They happened to like the combination of gothic sensibilities and early Bret Easton Ellis and she got published in 2007.
During this time, she was in the college town of La Plata, where she was a student of journalism and was living a wild life and not looking to become a published author. When she published another work and it proved very popular she decided to pursue the career path.

Some of her major influences include Robert Arlt, Silvina Ocampo, and poetry, gothic and horror fiction authors such as William Faulkner Stephen King, and Ray Bradbury.

“Things We Lost in the Fire” by Mariana Enriquez is a work that comes with devilishly daring and wildly imaginative tales of the macabre.

In this collection, Mariana Enriquez brings to life contemporary Argentina which he depicts as a place that is full of shocking corruption, violence, and inequality.

It is also a place where the legions of Desaparecidos and military dictatorship rule supreme in the memory of many citizens of Argentina.

In these stories reminiscent of Julio Cortazar and Shirley Jackson, three young friends are distracting themselves with pain and drugs as they endure a blackout enforced by the regime.

On the other side of the country, a girl who has lost everything enters an abandoned house never to be seen or heard from again. To protest domestic violence several women come together and set themselves on fire.

Despite all these disturbing disappearances and black magic, these stories are driven by compassion for the lost and frightened, and ultimately bring the wives and husbands, daughters and mothers into what is a familiar even if surprising reality.

Writing in hypnotic prose, Martinez explores what happens when our darkest desires are left unchecked to roam free.

Mariana Enriquez’s work the “Dangers of Smoking in Bed” is a mesmerizing and propulsive work full of unsettling stories. The author has been critically acclaimed for her sociopolitical and unconventional tales of the macabre.

It is a work populated by hungry women, unruly teenagers, homeless ghosts, and crooked ghosts as they walk the thin line between horror and urban realism. The stories in the collection are as socially conscious as they are terrifying.

They approximate the darkness of human history, an unspoken fetish, the female body, and illness with unsettling urgency. One of the best stories of the collection sees a woman who had an obsession with the human heart.

In other stories an entire neighborhood may be dealing with a curse since they incorrectly answered a question of morality, and several teenage girls are unable to let go of their rock star crush.
Written against a modern setting in Argentina and with explicit tenderness towards those in limbo, fear, and pain it makes for a chilling and sophisticated collection.

“Our Part of the Night” by Mariana Enriquez tells the story of a son and father who are crossing Argentina from Iguazu Falls to Buenos Aires. It is at a time when Argentina was ruled by a military junta and almost everything is controlled by armed soldiers.

Gaspar the son is protected by his father from the fate he seems destined for. His mother died in unclear circumstances even though the police declared the death an accident.
Just like his father the son is destined to join the Order, a secret society, and become a medium. Society is involved in the search for eternal life and in their quest they usually perform atrocious rituals.

They desperately need a medium but anyone that gets these special powers becomes cruel. The powers result in relentless mental and physical wear and tear and almost no one would willingly subject themselves to it.

Supernatural terror combines with real terrors in this dazzling and disturbing novel that shows that Mariana Enriquez will be one of the most important literary fiction in South America this century.