Praise
In every story, the Argentine journalist confronts bare suffering with a linguistic precision and a talent for imagery that his translator, Martina Broner, captures effortlessly...Nest in the Bones offers a whirlwind introduction to a writer whose enormous weight in Latin America is finally becoming palpable outside its borders.
Di Benedetto has written indispensable pages that have moved and continue moving me.
One of the greatest Argentinean writers and one of the greatest writers of Latin America.
A page from Di Benedetto is recognizable immediately, on the very first glance – like one of Van Gogh’s paintings.
Blends the fantastic sensibilities of Borges and Kafka with the profound pessimism of Dostoyevsky... Di Benedetto's view of the world is gloomy, his writing precise and poetic. It's a winning combination.
This collection from renowned Argentinean author Di Benedetto (Zama) showcases his short stories’ development from sparse and experimental into melancholic, deeply affecting fables... These stories bolster Di Benedetto’s reputation as a visionary talent, and serve as a worthy introduction to one of Latin America’s most influential writers.
Di Benedetto's eloquence makes the stories in Nest in the Bones works of exquisite beauty that are hard to resist. If, like me, you had never read any of his work until now this is a perfect introduction to a great author.
Readers with a love of Latin American authors will find Di Benedetto a welcome addition to the canon that's available in English.
Di Benedetto is the rare novelist who doesn't seek to reconstruct the past to prove a point. He lives the past, and exposes us to experiences and forms of behavior that retain all their weirdness.
It took sixty years for Antonio Di Benedetto's novel Zama, recognized in the Spanish-speaking world as a classic, to be translated into English... The belated arrival of Zama... raises an admittedly hyperbolic question: Can it be that the Great American Novel was written by an Argentinean?
Di Benedetto lets go of the reins of narrative logic and allows the spirit to take his hero where it will.
Read it above all for the triumph of its style: Zama holds forth in deep, stewing paragraphs as pompous as they are incisive. It's Sartre by way of J. Peterman.
Zama has the beauty and force of a classic, but also the attributes of an overlooked masterpiece…I think that Zama should be translated into English simply because so many English-speaking readers and authors haven't read one of the best novels of the 20th century. Good books are unique and need no justification.
[Nest in the Bones] display[s] to perfection Di Benedetto’s intense understanding of nastiness. . . and something of the range of his experiments with strangeness. . . It’s true that many of the stories in Nest in the Bones are dark and even cruel, but there is no dogma of darkness here.
Extras
Esther Allen, who translated Antonio Di Benedetto’s Zama, writes about her experience discussing literature with Argentine writers, readers, and editors: “No writer was mentioned with greater fervor than Antonio di Benedetto.” Read her full statement and an excerpt of Zama here.
Read Esther Allen on Di Benedetto, Zama, and Latin American literature in Lithub.
Read Sergio Chefjec’s review of Zama in The Quarterly Conversation. He says of the book, “It has the beauty and force of a classic, but also the attributes of an overlooked masterpiece.”
Roberto Bolaño is one of the many writers influenced by Antonio di Benedetto. His story “Sensini” is about di Benedetto and has been translated and made available online by The Barcelona Review.
Bruna Dantas Labo names Nest in the Bones as one of the books he was most looking forward to in 2017 in Words without Borders reading roundup.
Read an excerpt of the book, the short story “The Guide Dog of Hermosilla,” at Harper’s Magazine.