A Sunny Place for Melancholy People

“A Sunny Place for Melancholy People” is a captivating and unsettling collection of short stories about lives turned upside down by terrifying, surreal, or supernatural events.

In “The Mourning Dead,” a poor neighborhood is plagued by ghosts. The only one who can solve the problem is a woman who has learned to live with ghosts. In “Birds of the Night,” the riverbanks are filled with birds that were once suffering women. And in the title story, a hotel is haunted by the ghost of a girl found bloated in a rooftop water tank. This mysterious incident becomes the prelude to the formation of a cult that gathers to perform rituals, awaiting any sign of life from the girl’s ghost.

The stories in Mariana Enriquez’s world capture the darker aspects of modern society, where the lines between good and evil have blurred. By blending horror, the supernatural, and terrifying events with real-life occurrences, Enríquez gives a voice to the oppressed, the lost, and the forgotten—especially girls and women—and to Argentina’s turbulent and brutal history.

Mariana Enríquez is one of the most prominent writers of modern South American literature and a pioneer of contemporary horror.

“As vivid and indispensable as Kafka’s stories.”

“These tales evoke the fear of everyday horrors in a way that is entertaining, political, and wonderfully frightening.”