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  • Fresh Dirt from the Grave

Charco Press

Fresh Dirt from the Grave

by Giovanna Rivero.

Translated from French by Isabel Adey.

  • £11.99
  • Available
  • Paperback published on 20/06/2023
  • Page count: 155 pages
  • ISBN: 9781913867515
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Quick take

No degree of darkness can take away the tender heart of these short stories.

Synopsis

Shipwrecks, dive bars, possession, and science-this is where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet.

In Fresh Dirt from the Grave, a hillside is "an emerald saddle teeming with evil and beauty." It is this collision of harshness and tenderness that animates Giovanna Rivero's short stories, where no degree of darkness (buried bodies, lost children, wild paroxysms of violence) can take away from the gentleness she shows all violated creatures. A mad aunt haunts her family, two Bolivian children are left on the outskirts of a Metis reservation outside Winnipeg, a widow teaches origami in a women's prison and murders, housefires, and poisonings abound, but so does the persistent bravery of people trying to forge ahead in the face of the world. They are offered cruelty, often, indifference at best, and yet they keep going. Rivero has reworked the boundaries of the gothic to engage with pre-Columbian ritual, folk tales, sci-fi and eroticism, and found in the wound their humanity and the possibility of hope.

About the author

Giovanna Rivero is a Bolivian novelist and short story writer. She is one of Bolivia's most successful contemporary fiction writers. 

More books published by Charco Press

What they do: ‘Charco Press focuses on finding outstanding contemporary Latin American literature and bringing it to new readers in the English-speaking world. We aim to act as a cultural and linguistic bridge for you to be able to...

View all books by Charco Press

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