Strange Things Happen Here: 26 Short Stories and a Novel by Luisa Valenzuela. New York. 1979. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151857822. Translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane. 220 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bascove. Type design by Paul Gamarello.
DESCRIPTION - In this second book of fiction Luisa Valenzuela propels the reader on a shattering journey from the cafes of Buenos Aires to a house of prostitution in Barcelona, from the sinister corridors of the Ministry of the Interior to a lonely table of torture. Here is modern Argentina - the site of strange happenings - absurd violence, political repression, bizarre personal relationships. In Valenzuela's world the extraordinary marks the normal course of events. Children are murderers and psychiatrists are transvestites and celery munchers are criminals. Bombs are hidden in briefcases but they never explode, the bodies of lovers serve as maps of the city, neighborly offerings of food disguise the smell of burning flesh, mirrors reflect masked images. Innocence and evil are exquisitely united. Political repression assumes the form of sexual curiosity delirium inspires myth, victims are more powerful than their tormentors. Like the aborted child in ‘He Who Searches' Valenzuela's products, her creatures, have neither name nor sex nor line of conduct. There is comedy in Liliana's shotgun wedding to the cross-eyed Nicolás, there is tragedy in the murder of a harmless old man, and finally there is hope in a single thistle springing from acres of rock, in a writer who slowly and painfully types at night to record the history of her people. ‘There is true brilliance, there is true love, there is true freedom and liberty in each one of her pages' - Julio Cortázar . . . ‘Valenzuela's are the best stories to come out of Latin America in some time. Her style is original, her dialogue superb' - Gregory Rabassa.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Luisa Valenzuela (born November 26, 1938, in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a post-'Boom' novelist and short story writer. Her writing is characterized by an experimental, avant-garde style which questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective. She is best known for her work written in response to the dictatorship of the 1970s in Argentina. Works such as Como en la guerra (1977), Cambio de armas (1982) and Cola de lagartija (1983) combine a powerful critique of dictatorship with an examination of patriarchal forms of social organization and the power structures which inhere in human sexuality and gender relationships.
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