Selva Almada

Argentina | 1973

Considered as one of the most powerful voices in Argentinian literature and one of the most promising ones in Latin American fiction.

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Published by

Latin America and Spain Literatura Random House, Lumen, Mardulce Editora, Almadía Ediciones / France Métailié, Les éditions de l’œil / Netherlands Meulenhoff, Uitgeverij Vleugels / Brazil Todavía Livros / Germany Berenberg / Sweden Tranan / USA Graywolf Press / UK Charco Press, Pushkin Press / Italy Rizzoli, Polidoro, Edizioni SUR / Japan Shorai-Sha / Turkey Verita, Yapı Kredi Yayınları / Indonesia Labirin Buku / Greece Klidarithmos / Norway Camino Forlag / Portugal Dom Quixote / Serbia Publik Praktikum / Poland Wydawnictwo Cyranka / Russia Livebook Publishing / Saudi Arabia Tashkeell / Bulgaria Aquarius Publishing / India DC Books / China Shanghai Century Publishing Co.

Finalist for the International Booker Prize (shortlist), 2024

IILA-Literature Prize, 2023

Compared to Carson McCullers, William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, Selva Almada is one of the most powerful voices of contemporary Argentinian and Latin American Literature.

She received several distinctions and awards, such as the First Book Award in Edinburgh for her novel El viento que arrasa in 2019, and the IILA Prize for the best Latin American novel published in Italy in the 2021/2022 biennium for her novel No es un río in 2023.

She was on the shortlist for the International Booker Prize 2024 with her novel No es un río.

Her work has been translated into more than 20 languages.

She is one of the directors of Salvaje Federal, a bookshop specialized in literature written and published in Argentina.

In her realism of magical repercussions, Onetti and the Borges of El Sur come together with the inflamed shadow of Horacio Quiroga, but the quality and resolve of her prose produce a power of suggestion that is unique to Selva Almada. Francisco Solano, El País, Spain

What seems fantastical soon turns hyper realistic, a bit like in the stories of Rulfo or Sara Gallardo. Oliverio Coelho, La Nación, Argentina

Original and full of novelty, Selva Almada has seduced with a style which is both poetic and realistic. Her literature raises your hair without reaching the full sting of horror. Cristian Alarcón, Babelia El País, Spain

One of the most powerful literary voices to come out of Argentina in the past decade. Graciela Mochkofsky, New Yorker

Reading Selva Almada is to delve into wonder. Her writing is bold, and her stories speak to us as much of violence as of tenderness, as much of decay as of beauty. Mónica Ojeda

Selva Almada’s books are always linked by some sort of haunting rage. Your throat dries quickly. It’s impossible to abandon the story, to take your eyes off the page. Impossible to leave (…) Salomé Kiner, Le Temps, France

Almada particularly excels at depicting her characters’ fragility and vulnerability. Publisher’s Weekly

Reading Selva Almada is an immersive experience: her prose is read with the eyes, but experienced with all the senses. Cristina Ros, The Objective

It is literature of the provinces like that of Carson McCullers, for example. Regional in contrast with global cultures but not a fiction of manners. Just the opposite of much urban fiction, which is literature of manners without being regional. Beatriz Sarlo, Diario Perfil

Selva Almada reinvents the imaginative rural world of a country (…) She is an author gifted with very uncommon power and sensitivity. Rolling Stone Magazine

Selva Almada continues to speak from the margins, with that violent clarity of her language. Luis Guillermo Ibarra, La Jornada, Mexico

The depiction of local customs is earthy, and the non-standard language refers to local idiosyncrasies that Almada elevates to a universal status. Marta Sanz

Perhaps because she writes from the margins, Selva Almada manages to endow words with the meaning they once dreamed of having. Eider Rodríguez