{"id":398242,"date":"2018-05-08T10:00:38","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T14:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/?p=398242"},"modified":"2018-05-07T11:42:43","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T15:42:43","slug":"fever-dream-by-samanta-schweblin-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2018\/05\/08\/fever-dream-by-samanta-schweblin-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“Fever Dream” by Samanta Schweblin [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

This entry in the Why This Book Should Win<\/a> series is from former BTBA judge and founder of the Literary License blog, Gwendolyn Dawson, who\u00a0lives in Houston, TX and is a practicing lawyer. She is a longtime supporter of literature in translation and all literary arts.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fever Dream<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Argentina, Riverhead)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ten pages into Samanta Schweblin\u2019s Fever Dream<\/em>, I found myself asking, \u201cWhat the heck am I reading?\u201d Halfway in, I couldn\u2019t go to sleep because I was too scared, never mind that it was already past my bedtime. An hour later, I finished this slim novel and immediately went to check on my kids sleeping in their rooms. They were fine (of course), but I had to be sure. I\u2019ve since read Fever Dream<\/em> two more times, and it still holds its power to unsettle.<\/p>\n

Fever Dream<\/em> opens right in the middle of a scene, a dialog actually. With no explanation as to what\u2019s happening or who\u2019s speaking, the novel starts:<\/p>\n

They\u2019re like worms.<\/em><\/p>\n

What kind of worms?<\/p>\n

Like worms, all over.<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the boy who\u2019s talking, murmuring into my ear. I am the one asking questions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We are in a sick room with a boy and a patient. Every other grounding detail is initially withheld from the reader and then, piece by piece, slowly revealed over the course of the novel or else never revealed at all. Through this deliberate withholding, Schweblin sustains a sense of dread that pervades the entire novel, even the seemingly benign parts.<\/p>\n

In time, we learn that the woman, named Amanda, is in a rural clinic near where Amanda and her daughter have rented a summer house. The boy, David, is the son of a local woman who lives nearby. David suffered a near-death illness possibly related to water pollution, though it isn\u2019t clear. In public appearances, Schweblin has mentioned Argentina\u2019s ongoing environmental challenges, particularly water pollution in rural farming communities, as an inspiration for the novel. We can guess that Amanda suffers from the same illness that almost killed David, but that\u2019s not explicit either. David\u2019s conversation with Amanda in the hospital room is an attempt to uncover the origins of the sickness before Amanda dies from it, though it\u2019s difficult for him to keep Amanda on task:<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t normal, David. There\u2019s only darkness, and you\u2019re talking into my ear. I don\u2019t even know if this is really happening.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s happening, Amanda. I\u2019m kneeling at the edge of your bed, in one of the rooms at the emergency clinic. We don\u2019t have much time, and before time runs out we have to find the exact moment.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Through this combination of ambiguity and urgency, Schweblin has created a taut line of suspense that holds its tension all the way to the end of the novel. Megan McDowell\u2019s translation deftly captures this suspense and maintains the novel\u2019s propulsive momentum. Fever Dream<\/em> could be described as a horror, a mystery, an environmental cautionary tale, or a domestic drama, but it is none of these things exactly. Schweblin has created a new kind of story\u2014one that unsettles and raises more questions than it answers, leaving its readers with a lingering anxiety.<\/p>\n

Like the three short story collections Schweblin previously published, Fever Dream <\/em>has been collecting accolades, including the Tigre Juan Prize and a spot on the shortlist for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. In this year\u2019s Tournament of Books, Fever Dream<\/em> defeated George Saunders\u2019s Booker-Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo<\/em> in two separate match-ups to win the tournament. Now that this cult favorite has been longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award, this is the perfect time to pick it up and learn for yourself what all the fuss is about, preferably during daylight hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This entry in the Why This Book Should Win series is from former BTBA judge and founder of the Literary License blog, Gwendolyn Dawson, who\u00a0lives in Houston, TX and is a practicing lawyer. She is a longtime supporter of literature in translation and all literary arts. Fever Dream\u00a0by Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":398262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[35996,66446,48766,37876],"class_list":["post-398242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba","tag-btba-2018","tag-btba-fiction","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398282,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398242\/revisions\/398282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}