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Highlights
- The residents of a desolate town nestled in the Ecuadorian Andes are forced to reckon with the legend of Mildred, a girl wronged by the town years agoCocuáaacute;n, a desolate town nestled between the hot jungle and the frigid Andes, is about to slip away from memory.
- About the Author: Natalia García Freire was born in Cuenca, Ecuador, in 1991.
- 154 Pages
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Book Synopsis
The residents of a desolate town nestled in the Ecuadorian Andes are forced to reckon with the legend of Mildred, a girl wronged by the town years ago
Cocuáaacute;n, a desolate town nestled between the hot jungle and the frigid Andes, is about to slip away from memory. This is where Mildred was born, and where everything she had-her animals, her home, her lands--was taken from her after her mother's death. Years later, a series of strange events, disappearances, and outbursts of collective delirium will force its residents to reckon with the legend of old Mildred. Once again, they will feel the shadow of death that has hung over the town ever since she was wronged. The voices of nine characters--Mildred, Ezequiel, Agustina, Manzi, Carmen, Víiacute;ctor, Baltasar, Hermosina, and Filatelio--tell us of the past and present of that doomed place and Mildred's fate.Natalia García Freire's vivid language blurs the lines between dreams and reality and transports the reader to the hypnotic Andean universe of Ecuador.
Review Quotes
Praise for A Carnival of Atrocities
"A Carnival of Atrocities is a marvel of creative fire that takes uniquely unexpected turns, yet it has parallels with both Hanging Rock and The Leftovers in that its drama centers on the unexplained disappearance of several people, who wander off toward "the crag," while those left behind reexamine and ultimately reinvent their faith." -Los Angeles Review of Books
"For those with an appetite for lyrical absurdity, this dark and demanding journey into a bedeviled night
will repay the effort. There are echoes of Samuel Beckett in portions of this mordant fable, but Garcia Freire's
dreamy poetry is her own." --The Arts Fuse
"In Ecuadoran writer Natalia Garcíiacute;a Freire's latest novel, A Carnival of Atrocities, rising from the landscape is a swirling, multivocal, and vivid portrait of a small town torn apart by prejudices and suspicion. There may be something rotten buried deep in the earth--but perhaps it is history itself. With an expert, distinguished lyricism translated melodiously by Victor Meadowcroft, García Freire aims her incisive sights on the violence and hatred that pervade amidst dissenting belief systems, gesturing towards the ways a limited, desperate existence can further inhibit our shortsighted perspectives." --Asymptote
"Years ago, in a town between the steaming jungle and the frigid Andes--a town soon to slip out of existence--a girl was wronged. Mildred was born in Cocuáaacute;n, and it was there that she had centered her life, but after her mother died, everything--her animals, her home, and her lands--was taken from her. Now, strange things keep happening; there's collective delirium and a shadow of death that hangs over the town, and people think it's Mildred come to take her revenge."--Book Riot, The Biggest Books Out this Spring (BIPOC Edition 2025)
"Set against the backdrop of a remote town in Ecuador, Natalia García Freire's newly-translated novel A Carnival of Atrocities (translated by Victor Meadowcroft) is a tale of a community haunted by its past." --Reactor Mag
"What an event! Natalia García Freire conjures up an ancient forest and sets language and its roots alight, including the living and dead. Marvelous, dazzling, celebratory writing. I can't say it enough: read it!" --MARÍA SÁNCHEZ, author of Land of Women
"The language in this novel weaves together miracles, curses, and deliriums. Natalia García Freire creates disturbing and beautiful books that remind one of the poetic cruelty of far-off mythologies." --IRENE VALLEJO, author of the international bestseller Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
"This is the story of a town, Cocuán, told through its characters. A story with hints of fable, myth, madness, death, innocence, evil ... It's amazing, as always." --ANDREA CARRASCO, ABC
"In A Carnival of Atrocities, the story of poor Mildred, banished, dispossessed, and ostracized, is preserved in Mother Earth, Pachamama, in Cocuán." --INÉS GARCÍA, Libero Editorial
"In Natalia García Freire's literary universe, everything that was destined to remain a secret, hidden away, has come to light: the wind, the birds, the forest. She writes from the ground level, somewhere between the ferocity of Flannery
About the Author
Natalia García Freire was born in Cuenca, Ecuador, in 1991. She teaches Creative Writing at Escuela de Escritores de Madrid. García Freire's debut novel, This World Does Not Belong to Us, was published in English by World Editions and One World in 2022. This World Does Not Belong to Us won the English PEN Translation Award, was nominated for the Tigre Juan Award and selected by the New York Times as one of the best Spanish-language books of 2019. It has been translated into Italian, French, Turkish, and Danish. A Carnival of Atrocities is Natalia García Freire's second novel published by World Editions.
Victor Meadowcroft is a translator from Spanish and Portuguese and a graduate of the University of East Anglia's master's programme in literary translation. His published translations include stories by Agustina Bessa-Luís in Take Six: Six Portuguese Women Writers (co-translation with Margaret Jull Costa, Dedalus Books, 2018) and Toño the Infallible by Evelio Rosero (co-translation with Anne McLean, New Directions, 2022), which was shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize in 2023 and longlisted for the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute of Translation Prize in the same year. His translation of Natalia García Freire's This World Does Not Belong to Us was published by World Editions in 2022 and was shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán.