Tender

The third and final installment of Ariana Harwicz's "Involuntary Trilogy" finds us on familiar, disquieting ground. Under the spell of a mother’s madness, the French countryside transforms into a dreamscape of interconnected imagery: animals, desire, the functions of the body. Most troublingly: the comfort of a teenage son. Scorning the bourgeois mores and conventionality of their small town, she withdraws him from school and the two embark on ever more antisocial and dangerous behavior. Harwicz is at her best here, building an interior world so robust, and so grotesque, that it eclipses our shared reality. Savage, and savagely funny, she leaves us singed, if not scorched.

Praise for Ariana Harwicz

Uncomfortable and fascinating, Harwicz drags us on a turbulent voyage of self-discovery via the characters' analysis of their own past and present. VANITY FAIR (UK)

Man Booker International Prize (Longlist)
Society of Authors Valle-Inclán Prize (Shortlist)
Best Translated Book Award (Finalist)
Internationaler Literaturpreis (Shortlist)
Republic of Consciousness Prize (Shortlist)

A touch of David Lynch. --The Guardian

Celebrating lust and bolshiness with an intensity worthy of Clarice Lispector. --The Times Literary Supplement

The over-all effect is exacting.... And yet "Die, My Love" isn't truly beholden to plot. The thrill is in the human as animal, and even as parasite. --The New Yorker

Die, My Love is impressive for the force of the narrator's insatiable rage, which fragments the boundaries of the self. [Anne Enright] --New York Review of Books

Unrestrained and unadorned, Harwicz's writing has a wild beauty.... A portrait of motherhood, passion, and mental illness that cuts to the bone. --Kirkus

We are used to female narrators who occupy one of several familiar niches: blandly 'likeable', 'flawed', or pathological; murderers or abusers who are profiled with just enough sympathy to make us feel humane as we judge them. Harwicz takes us somewhere more profound and forces us to confront the thought that these easy fictional 'explanations' are specious. Lurking inside all of us is the potential for horror. --Hari Kunzru, author of THE IMPRESSIONIST and GODS WITHOUT MEN

The prose of Ariana Harwicz embarks on a vertiginous linguistic journey that joyfully shreds all vestiges of common sense. --María Sonia Cristoff, author of FALSE CALM

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Dangerously addictive. --The Guardian

A precise, intense, ruthless mosaic that demands we read carefully, never quickly. --Literary Hub

Celebrating lust and bolshiness with an intensity worthy of Clarice Lispector. --The Times Literary Supplement

Harwicz succeeds in luring the reader into the darker aspects of the human mind. --Publishers Weekly

Ariana Harwicz is the real deal, the very definition of an artist. --Adam Biles, author of FEEDING TIME

Ariana Harwicz is wet respite from deathless, sexless, bloodless art. --Melissa Broder, author of THE PISCES and SO SAD TODAY

Ariana Harwicz is an intensely passionate and fearless writer whose irresistible prose deserves to be read far and wide. --Claire-Louise Bennett, author of POND

A kick up the arse to the literary novel. Feebleminded disassembles form, sensibility, everything... at once a riot (a revolution!) and a headtrip. --Joanna Walsh, author of VERTIGO and BREAK.UP

Harwicz achieves an asphyxiating writing, saturated with images of great beauty despite their disturbing character. --El País

The acoustic quality of her prose, the pulse of her voice, the intensity of her imagery make her subjects so daring, so relentless, so damned and unconventional - very hard to drop or ever to forget. --Lina Meruane, author of FALSE CALM

Unrelenting and unforgettable, the Argentine author's latest novel is a breathtaking, hectic ride, as well as a strangely exhilarating story that confirms her as one of the most formidable writers at work today. --Jeremy Garber, Powell's Bookshop

Globetrotting: Your sneak preview of books in translation --New York Times

This is a novel whose characters's conflicts spill out of the page and into the prose used to tell their story, making for a searing read. --Volume 1 Brooklyn

Feebleminded is a nuclear bomb of recent literature from Argentina, a book of exceptional power with febrile characters. --Pagina/12