Natural Histories: Stories

Marc Notes: Translated from the Spanish.; Siamese fighting fish, cockroaches, cats, a snake and a strange fungus all serve here as mirrors that reflect the unconfessable aspects of human nature buried within us. The traits and fates of these animals illuminate such deeply natural, human experiences as the cruelty born of cohabitation, the desire to reproduce and the impulse not to and the inexplicable connection that can bind, eerily, two beings together. Each Nettel tale creates, with tightly wound narrative tension, a space wherein her characters feel excruciatingly human, exploring how the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves within us, clandestinely, irrevocably, both unseen and overtly. Review Quotes: "Nettel creates marvelous parallels between the sorrows and follies of her human characters and the creatures they live with." Carmela Ciuraru, "The New York Times" "The gaze [Nettel] turns on madnesses both temperate and destructive, on manias, on deviances, is so sharp that it has us seeing straight into our own obsessions." Xavier Houssain, "Le Monde" "Guadalupe Nettel is one of the most interesting voices of the new Mexican fiction." J. A. Masoliver Rodenas, "La Vanguardia" "Seasoned readers will delight in this literary voice, new to the landscape of Latin American literature, a voice sophisticated as it is original." "Arcadia" "Guadalupe Nettel reveals the subliminal beauty within beings of odd behavior and painstakingly examines the intimacies of her soul." "Magazine Litteraire" "It has been a long time since I've found in the literature of my generation a world as personal and untransferable as that of Guadalupe Nettel." Juan Gabriel Vasquez "The career of this young storyteller is worth keeping an eye on. A master of style, with a marvelous poetic naturalism, her ideas and manners distinguish her from what we are accustomed to in Mexican literature." Joaquin Marco, " El Cultural" Guadalupe Nettel s stories treat us with a gentle irony skillfully translated by JT Lichtenstein to the secret correspondences between the surface of nature s quirky wisdom (from cats to fungi) and the sad, funny, fragile, resilient human condition. The epigraph from Pliny the Elder cuts to the core of these magnetic pieces, each discrete and yet somehow connecting: All animals know what it is they need, except for man. Suzanne Jill Levine, University of California at Santa Barbara "Beautifully translated from the Spanish by J. T. Lichtenstein"Natural Histories"delivers everything you want from a short story collection. Guadalupe Nettel s storytelling power is majestic. With an unflinching eye, time and time again, she drives readers on an exploratory safari into the heart of human nature. Funny, touching, terrifying, horrific and/or sad-you never know what you ll find when you tentatively set out in search of potential dangers, but one thing is abundantly clear: safe in her skilled hands, eachjourney holds the promise of being a life changing event." "Typographical Era" "These stories are an interesting, arresting study of how their lives mirror our own." Gretchen Wagner, "San Francisco Book Review" "One that stood out for me in particular among these very good books isNatural Historiesby Guadalupe Nettel, translated by J. T. Lichtenstein. Nettel is a wonderful Mexican writer, and each of the stories in this slim collection, published by Seven Stories, takes a wry philosophical look at the relationship between people and the creatures they live with whether a pair of pet fish or an infestation of cockroaches." Jonathan Lee, "Electronic Literature" "From the Hardcover edition.""Table of Contents: The Marriage of the Red Fish 11 War in the Trash Cans 41 Felina 61 Fungus 83 The Snake from Beijing 103 "From the Hardcover edition.""Biographical Note: One of the most talked-about writers of contemporary Mexican fiction, GUADALUPE NETTEL is a Bogota 39 author and Granta Best Untranslated Writer. Her novels and collections of short stories have received international critical acclaim and won awards in both Europe and Latin America, including the Mexican Gilberto Owen National Literature Prize and the Antonin Artaud Prize. "Natural Histories," for which she won the 2013 Ribera del Duero Short Fiction Award, and her novel "The Body Where I was Born" (Seven Stories Press, 2015) are her first books to be published in English. Nettel lives in Mexico City. "From the eBook edition.""