Paradises, by Iosi Havilio (And Other Stories, 2013)
Translated from the Spanish by Beth Fowler
Recently widowed, a young woman leaves the countryside for Buenos Aires with her four-year-old son to build a new life. She finds work in the zoo and moves into a squatted tower block at the invitation of one of its residents.
Is this life in the shadows, an underworld of cut-price Christmases, drugs and dealers, or is this simply life? And why do snakes seem to be invading every aspect of it?
Thoughtful, yet unafraid of squalor or the perils of insecurity, this is a voice for right now, obliquely critical, grimly comic.
