'In this slim and superb book, Schweblin takes on the desire to love, to parent, and to care for one's own body - hardly extraordinary themes - and invests them with a fresh poignancy.'

Mouthful of Birds
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE, 2019
Samanta SchweblinShortlisted for the Premio Valle Inclán, 2020
Nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award, 2019
A SPELLBINDING COLLECTION OF STORIES FROM A MAJOR INTERNATIONAL LITERARY STAR
The crunch of a bird’s wing.
A cloud of butterflies, so beautiful it smothers.
A crimson flash of blood across an artist’s canvas.
Spine-tingling and unexpected, unearthly and strange, the stories of Mouthful of Birds are impossible to forget. Samanta Schweblin’s writing expertly blurs the line between the surreal and the everyday, pulling the reader into a world that is at once nightmarish and beautiful. An exhilarating tour de force guaranteed to leave the pulse racing.
Reviews
‘The Grimm brothers and Franz Kafka pay a visit to Argentina in Samanta Schweblin's darkly humorous tales of people who have slipped through cracks or fallen down holes into alternate realities.’
‘The author of the magnetic, scalp-prickling Fever Dream returns with stories as Gothic and incantatory as a telltale heart- virtuoso fiction from Argentina's own Edgar Allan Poe.’
'Spritely and uncanny, this is a beautifully imagined and skilfully executed collection of stories.'
‘So strange and beautiful.’
'Impressive... Schweblin is among the most acclaimed Spanish-language writers of her generation.'
‘This is our world, and sharp-focused, but stripped of its usual meanings... Brutal violence is twisted into horrific, intensely experienced art.’
‘These wild, unsettling, absurdist tales cement her status as a penetrating voice in modern fiction.’
‘[Schweblin's] particular genius lies in the fact that there’s something inherently savage and ungovernable about her work... The finest offerings here beg to be illustrated by Paula Rego then animated by David Lynch... Schweblin herself puts it best: “Horror and beauty! What a combination!”
‘Starting a story by the Argentinian Samanta Schweblin is like tumbling into a dark hole with no idea where you'll end up.’
‘Samanta Schweblin’s strange, haunting and stunningly beautiful collection of short stories… Many of these stories got under my skin and lingered with me long after I’d put the book down.’
‘At once fantastically out there and real to the point of being haunting.’