Tender - by Ariana Harwicz (Paperback)

About the Book

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. -- Publisher's description.

Book Synopsis

A mother and son inhabit an isolated and increasingly dangerous private world.

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.

Review Quotes

"As ever, Harwicz both impresses and repels with her blistering descriptions of the extremes of human behavior." --Publishers Weekly

"It is hard to match this, or any of the books in this trilogy, for sheer searing memorability." --Irish Times

"Disturbingly brilliant - and brilliantly disturbing - Tender is a satiating end to Harwicz's unconventional collection." --The Wee Review

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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)

"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

"A touch of David Lynch." --The Guardian

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

"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

"A wild, feral scream of a book that subverts all your traditional expectations." --SERVICE95

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

"Harwicz forces us to confront the thought that [...] lurking inside all of us is the potential for horror." --Hari Kunzru, author of THE IMPRESSIONIST and GODS WITHOUT MEN

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

"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 SEEING RED

"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

"Die, My Love blows away the cobwebs of the literary world." --Samantha Schweblin, author of FEVER DREAM

"The first-person narrator of the stylish, bracing novel is deadpan, enraged, horny, bored--a voice that is entirely in control, from a character who is tipping into unreliability if not insanity." --Harper's Bazaar

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"Dangerously addictive." --The Guardian

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

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

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

"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 SEEING RED

"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

"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

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

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About the Author

Ariana Harwicz is one of the most radical figures in contemporary Argentinian literature. Her prose is characterised by its violence, eroticism, irony and criticism of the clichés surrounding notions of the family and conventional relationships. Born in Buenos Aires in 1977, Harwicz studied screenwriting and drama in Argentina, and earned a degree in Performing Arts from the University of Paris VII as well as a Masters in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She has taught screenwriting and written plays. Her 'involuntary' trilogy of books published by Charco Press comprises Die, My Love (2017), Feebleminded (2019) and Tender (2021). Die, My Love was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (2018) and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize (2018), and has been translated into more than ten languages. In 2025 Die My Love is being released as a major feature film directed by Lynne Ramsay and starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.

Originally from Buenos Aires and now based in Edinburgh, Carolina Orloff is an experienced translator and researcher in Latin American literature. In 2016, Carolina co-founded Charco Press, where she acts as Publishing Director and Chief Editor. She is also the co-translator of Ariana Harwicz's novels Die, My Love, Feebleminded and Tender, and of Jorge Consiglio's Fate .

Annie McDermott is the translator of a dozen books from Spanish and Portuguese, by such writers as Mario Levrero, Ariana Harwicz, Brenda Lozano, Fernanda Trías and Lídia Jorge. She was awarded the Premio Valle-Inclán for her translation of Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zárate, and her translation of Brickmakers by Selva Almada was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. In 2024 her translation of Selva Almada's novel Not a River was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, and is now based in Hastings in the UK.