Visceral - by María Fernanda Ampuero (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A raw personal essay collection by the internationally known author of Cockfight and Human Sacrifices on the terror of being in a female body in a misogynistic world.

What does it mean to move with a woman's body through a misogynistic world? María Fernanda Ampuero, one of the greatest writers of the new wave of Latin American gothic fiction, answers this question in this personal essay collection that's part analysis, part confessional, and part horror story.

Through vivid personal details--witnessing a COVID corpse shaded by a colorful parasol on a park bench, remembering a disintegrating relationship through a letter to a stuffed mouse, slowly realizing she is being abducted by a Tinder hookup, imagining herself a barbarian on the streets of Madrid--and with surreal dark humor, Ampuero traces her memories of colonizers and exiles, parents and childlessness, lockdown relationships and lost innocence, fatphobia, mental illness, and writing as a practice for surviving all of it. What emerges is one woman's account of what it means to live in a human body--oppressed, ailing, and outraged--told as only Ampuero can.

Review Quotes

"María Fernanda Ampuero opens her wounds for all to see. She has no mercy, and she is not a victim. This is how you do brave and defiant. And of course her writing is pure elegance and poetry." --Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night

"Visceral hurts us and dazzles us: It's literature that awakens us from within the heart of violence." --Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, author of We Are Green and Trembling

"This work is a war cry, a call to all those who suffer in silence to know that they aren't alone, that it's possible to keep living despite the weight of the trauma they've suffered." --Contrapunto

"Ampuero leads the international wave of Ecuadorian writers." --New York Times en Español

About the Author

María Fernanda Ampuero is a writer and a journalist, born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 1976. She has been published in newspapers and magazines around the world, and is the author of the journalistic narrative nonfiction titles Lo que aprendí en la peluquería and Permiso de residencia. She is also the author of the short story collections Human Sacrifices and Cockfight, which have been translated into several languages, as well as the recipient of the Cosecha Eñe Award for Short Stories. In 2012 she was selected as one of the 100 Most Influential Latin Americans in Spain, and in 2018 she won the first Mad Women Fest Short Story Prize. She is based in Madrid, Spain.

Frances Riddle has translated numerous Spanish-language authors including Isabel Allende, Claudia Piñeiro, Leila Guerriero, and Sara Gallardo. Her translation of Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022, and her translation of Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic was awarded an English PEN grant in 2021. Her work has appeared in journals such as Granta, Electric Literature, and the White Review, among others. She holds a BA in Spanish from Louisiana State University and an MA in translation studies from the University of Buenos Aires. Originally from Houston, she now lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.