Our Share of Night

Argentinian author and journalist Mariana Enriquez returns with a surreal horror epic about the Order, a fictional international cult of wealthy followers focused on attaining the one thing money still can’t buy: immortality. Our Share of Night, first published in Spanish in 2019 and newly translated by Megan McDowell, follows the coming of age of Gaspar, a young man with supernatural skills whose mother is a descendent of one of the Order’s founding families. After she dies mysteriously, Gaspar is left under the care of his grief-stricken and abusive father, Juan, a powerful medium who believes the cult is out to exploit his son’s gifts. Gaspar, however, worries that his inherited clairvoyance is actually a curse against humanity.

Set in the years before and after Argentina’s “Dirty War,” in which an estimated tens of thousands of people were killed or disappeared under the country’s military dictatorship between 1974 and 1983, the 600-page book doesn’t shy away from the gory details of tyranny. Using her country’s violent past as inspiration, Enriquez spins a terrifying tale of privilege, exploitation, and complicity that acts as a warning for the future. —Shannon Carlin

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