The best known books set in each country: Argentina

See here for methodology. I am back to running through countries in population order, after diverting to right past wrongs for the last four weeks. I generally exclude books not actually set in the specific country, this time Argentina, but I’ve bent that a bit here.

TitleAuthorGR
raters
LT
owners
Tender Is the FleshAgustina Bazterrica 266,0532,493
The TunnelErnesto Sabato 80,8752,332
In PatagoniaBruce Chatwin 17,6323,361
Fever DreamSamanta Schweblin 43,5601,329
Things We Lost in the FireMariana Enríquez 47,8651,038
Kiss of the Spider WomanManuel Puig 19,7692,311
Our Share of NightMariana Enríquez 44,504905
The Dangers of Smoking in BedMariana Enríquez 49,004732

To my dismay, I have nonetheless excluded all of the Jorge Luis Borges short story collections, Ficciones, Labyrinths, the Collected Fiction and The Aleph and Other Stories, because a lot less than 50% of each of them is not clearly set in Argentina, and around half of each of them are in fact clearly set elsewhere.

The majority of Hopscotch, by Julio Cortázar, is set in Paris although there’s a substantial chunk in Argentina at the end. And The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares, is set on a fictional island which is clearly distinguished from Argentina. Most of these were far far ahead of the rest on LibraryThing, apart from The Invention of Morel (though even that has 2,654 LibraryThing owners).

My winning novel, Tender Is the Flesh, has as many raters on Goodreads as the next four put together but is only second on LibraryThing. It is not explicitly set in Argentina, but none of its many reviewers seem to think that it is set anywhere else, so I am allowing it the top spot. I note with great interest that another Argentinian woman writer, Mariana Enriquez, also shows a big imbalance between the two website, with around fifty times more raters on Goodreads than owners on LibraryThing. (The normal ratio is more like 20:1.) The two Enriquez books that I have not read also appear to be short story collections, but unlike Borges most of them appear to be set in Argentina.

Next up are Afghanistan and Yemen. I don’t think Afghanistan is going to surprise me.

Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Intento salir en silencio para no despertar a su padre, pero se sorprendio cuando lo encontro despierto, serio pero tranquilo, saliendo de la cocina con una taza de to en la mano. La casa, como siempre, no estaba iluminada por luz electrica: solamente el televisor encendido en el living, vacio salvo por el sillon de pana, amarillo, muy grande, casi una cama. Cuando Juan vio a Gaspar se le acerco y encendio un pequefio velador que estaba sobre el piso. Tenia un cigarrillo en la otra mano.He tried to leave the house quietly so he wouldn’t wake his father, but was surprised to see him already awake, serious but serene, coming from the kitchen with a cup of tea. As always, there were no electric lights on in the house, only the TV in the living room, which was unfurnished but for the yellow corduroy sofa that was so big it was practically a bed. When Juan saw Gaspar, he went over to him and switched on a small lamp on the floor. His other hand held a cigarette.
translation by Megan MacDowell

This was the longest of the books submitted for last year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award, and also one of the easiest to rule out; it is a fantasy novel with no trace of science fiction in it. I put it aside, knowing that I would come back to it at some point; but in the meantime I saw a lot of very negative reviews online, and suspected that I might not last 100 pages into the 725 of the English translation.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. The book is about a boy whose relatives are involved with a black magic cult operating between Argentina and Europe, set during the alternation between military dictatorship and democracy; there are of course dark and intricate family relationships, murky happenings and a cute but doomed dog. It does go on rather a long time, but I found it engaging and page-turning. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2022. Next on that pile is The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, by Serhii Plokhy.