Good and Evil and Other Stories
Samanta Schweblin
Translated by Megan McDowell
28 August 2025Synopsis
Sculpted and lucid, strange and uncanny, this is the explosive new collection from the incomparable imagination of Samanta Schweblin, a master of the short story.
An alchemic blend of the raw, the astonishing and the tragic, every story is as perfectly unexpected as a snare: tightly, exquisitely wound, ready to snap at a touch.
Here, a young father is haunted by the consequences of a moment of distraction; tragedy is complicated by the inexplicable appearance of an injured horse; an attempted poisoning leads two writers to startling conclusions; and, a lonely woman’s charity is rewarded with home-invasion. And in the shocking opening story, a mother surfaces from the depths of the lake behind her house, where she saw something awful yet alluring.
Guilt, grief, and relationships severed permeate this mesmerising collection – but so do unspeakable bonds of family, love, and longing, each sinister and beautiful. Step by step these unnerving stories lure us into the shadows to confront the monsters of everyday life – ourselves.
Details
28 August 2025
9781035050161Reviews
Remarkably taut, clear, precise, and yet capable of capturing the extent of our human messiness, these stories are perfect for the times we dwell insideColum McCann, author of Apeirogon
No one writes like Samanta Schweblin. Her narratives are sui generis - wonderfully unpredictable and invitingly strangeLorrie Moore, author of I am Homeless if This Is Not My Home
Samanta Schweblin combines the urgent propulsion that characterizes all great storytelling with precise, if uncanny, descriptions of human feelings that often go unnamed, those ambiguous zones of human reality where awe, dread, and desire mingleSiri Hustvedt, author of Memories of the Future
'Samanta Schweblin writes at the very end of the possible. Her stories are mesmerising, exquisitely crafted and deeply unsettling. Each sentence is as precise and invasive as an expertly wielded scalpel'Jan Carson, author of The Raptures
