El fino arte de crear monstruos
An author at the top of her game who weaves together endearing scenes, full of humor and incredible surprises, with the same ease with which children dream… and have nightmares.
“Morteros flooded easily and for no apparent reason.” Thus begins El fino arte de crear monstruos, a hypnotic narrative with one foot in the Argentina reality of the town of Morteros and the other in the magical imagination of the young girl Vidria.
Floating coffins, cadaverous milanesas, apocalyptic cows, mutant girls, and a certain Harley Davidson are some of the unexpected protagonists of daily life in Morteros as Vidria grows up and learns to navigate the world—or at least that’s how it appears through her unbridled imagination and Silvana Vogt’s exuberant voice.
PRESS
«The past can be magic, memory can be magic, but what is definitely magic is childhood.» Ricardo Martínez Llorca, Zenda
«The subtle art of imagination.» Carmen Cáceres, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos
«A well-rounded novel that has captivated me. A totally original new world. The perfect blend of naivety and lucidity, of innocence and intelligence. Vidria is like a Wednesday from the humid pampas. A gaze made of wonder.» Lucía Lijtmaer, author of Cautery in Efecto Doppler, Radio 3
«A celebration of imagination through writing (“writing is like lying”) in which Vogt writes, describes, narrates, dissects, and weaves her own et in Arcadia ego—that idyllic childhood paradise where, as in life, death beats within.» Gema Monlleó, Détour
«That girl is perfection. That part is the seed: the author describes how she pauses, how she moves forward, how a character can be captured within a bureaucratic magical realism. There’s no train in Morteros; you can only escape with tar and gasoline.» Octavio Gómez Milián, Motel Margot
«Written in beautiful, direct, unpretentious prose, it makes you smile, surprises you, leads you to search for country songs on Spotify, look up a map of Argentina to verify the existence of Morteros, and, above all, moves you.» Mónica Montero, El correo de Zamora
«The fine art of creating monsters proves to be a cathartic experience and a possible answer to the origins of dreams and traumas that spring from childhood.» Revista Purgante