The Impostor
and Other Stories
Silvina Ocampo author Daniel Balderston translator Helen Oyeyemi editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Profile Books Ltd
Published:2nd Dec '21
Should be back in stock very soon
Fantastical, unnerving short stories from a Surrealist master of the form
Whimsical and sinister, each story by Silvina Ocampo is like a knife of spun sugar that can still pierce between your ribs. A thief breaks into the house of a psychic with disastrous results, a bride has her personality subsumed by the previous occupant of her home, and two men switch destinies for a change of pace. The Impostor offers a comprehensive collection from one of the twentieth century's great forgotten woman writers. Here are tales of doubles and living dolls, angels and demons, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, and much else that is mad, sublime, and delicious. With an array spanning the length of Ocampo's career, these haunting stories are among the world's strangest and best.
Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature. -- Jorge Luis Borges
No other writer better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us. -- Italo Calvino
Few writers have an eye for the small horrors of everyday life; fewer still see the everyday marvellous. Other than Silvina Ocampo, I cannot think of a single writer who at any time or in any language, has chronicled both with such wise and elegant humour. -- Alberto Manguel
The black satire of her stories spares almost no one... eerily prescient * Daily Telegraph *
Ocampo captures mundane events in a whimsical, slightly sinister style * Monocle *
A comprehensive collection of surreal tales * i paper *
The allure of Silvina Ocampo's short fiction lies in the raising of unexpected questions again and again. * Tablet *
Comparable to the mighty César Aira, the most surreal stories of Murakami, and her great admirers Borges and Calvino, Ocampo's unnervingly hypnotic, frequently macabre stories are clever, funny, and brilliantly, hauntingly strange. * Big Issue *
ISBN: 9781788168793
Dimensions: 198mm x 130mm x 26mm
Weight: 300g
368 pages
Main - Classic Edition