The Houseguest and Other Stories

Like those of Kafka, Poe, Leonora Carrington, or Shirley Jackson, Amparo Dávila’s stories are terrifying, mesmerizing, and expertly crafted—you’ll finish reading each one gasping for air. With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, loneliness, and fear. She is a writer obsessed with obsession who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures. After reading The Houseguest—her debut collection in English—you’ll wonder how this secret was kept for so long.

A former Mellon Public Scholar, Audrey Harris holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic languages and literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Matthew Gleeson is a writer, translator, and co-editor of Writing Across the Landscape: Travel Journals 1960-2010 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.