Then during August – since 2014 also known as Women in Translation (WIT) month – I saw that it had been included at number 3 on a fascinating list of the 100 best books by female writers in translation compiled by the founder of WIT month. I first heard of Fever Dream via social media. Schweblin had already won the Spanish language Tigre Juan award in 2014, the book’s initial year of publication. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017 and won the Shirley Jackson Award for best novella in the same year. Fever Dream appeared in English translation in the same year, and instantly received a lot of attention. In 2017 Samanta Schweblin was featured on the second Bogotá39 list, featuring the best 39 Latin American authors under the age of 39. Published in Spanish as Distancia de rescate (Rescue Distance), the modern gothic, body-swap novella is apparently inspired by Argentina’s environmental problems, and is probably best consumed in one suspenseful sitting. This is a short sharp shock of a book, a hallucinatory horror story that builds up a constant hum of excruciating tension over its 150 pages. Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell
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