Books by Silvina Ocampo
Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories (NYRB Classics)
An NYRB Classics Original
Thus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s great masters of the story and the novella. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman, a suicidal romance, and much else that is incredible, mad, sublime, and delicious. Italo Calvino has written that no other writer “better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don’t show us.” Jorge Luis Borges flatly declared, “Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature.”
Dark, gothic, fantastic, and grotesque, these haunting stories are among the world’s most individual and finest.
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Where There's Love, There's Hate (Neversink)
by Silvina Ocampo, Adolfo Bioy Casares
A witty yet gripping pastiche of murder mysteries set in an Argentine seaside resort, peppered with literary allusions
In seaside Bosque de Mar, guests at the Hotel Central are struck by double misfortune: the mysterious death of one of their party, and an investigation headed by the physician, writer and insufferable busybody, Dr. Humberto Huberman. When quiet, young translator Mary is found dead on the first night of Huberman's stay, he quickly appoints himself leader of an inquiry that will see blame apportioned in turn to each and every guest--including Mary's own sister--and culminating in a wild, wind-blown reconnaissance mission to the nearby shipwreck, the Joseph K.
Never before translated into English, Where There's Love, There's Hate is both genuinely suspenseful mystery fiction and an ingenious pastiche of the genre, the only novel co-written by two towering figures of Latin American literature. Famously friends and collaborators of Jorge Luis Borges, husband and wife Bioy Casares and Ocampo combine their gifts to produce a novel that's captivating, unashamedly erudite and gloriously witty.
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The Promise
by Chaim Potok, Nicola Davies, Silvina Ocampo
“This tale is a sturdy one that is made even more emphatic by Davies’s terse writing style. The text is heightened in every way by Carlin’s outstanding mixed-media artwork.” — Booklist (starred review)
On a mean street in a mean, broken city, a young girl tries to snatch an old woman’s bag. But the frail old woman says the thief can’t have it without giving something in return: the promise. It is the beginning of a journey that will change the girl’s life — and a chance to change the world, for good.
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The Promise
by Chaim Potok, Nicola Davies, Silvina Ocampo
An allegorical tale of hope takes on new life in this stirring, gorgeously illustrated story.
On a mean street in a mean, broken city, a young girl tries to snatch an old woman’s bag. But the frail old woman, holding on with the strength of heroes, says the thief can’t have it without giving something in return: the promise. It is the beginning of a journey that will change the thieving girl’s life — and a chance to change the world, for good. Here is the story of a magical discovery that will touch the heart and imagination of every reader, young and old. In an exciting collaboration, author Nicola Davies joins forces with illustrator Laura Carlin to create a contemporary tale inspired by Jean Giono’s 1953 story, L’homme qui plantait des arbres.
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The Promise
by Chaim Potok, Nicola Davies, Silvina Ocampo
In a passionate, energetic narrative, The Promise brilliantly dramatizes what it is to master and use knowledge to make one’s own way in the world.
Reuven Malter lives in Brooklyn, he’s in love, and he’s studying to be a rabbi. He also keeps challenging the strict interpretations of his teachers, and if he keeps it up, his dream of becoming a rabbi may die.
One day, worried about a disturbed, unhappy boy named Michael, Reuven takes him sailing and cloud-watching. Reuven also introduces him to an old friend, Danny Saunders—now a psychologist with a growing reputation. Reconnected by their shared concern for Michael, Reuven and Danny each learns what it is to take on life—whether sacred truths or a troubled child—according to his own lights, not just established authority.
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The Promise
by Chaim Potok, Nicola Davies, Silvina Ocampo
Kirkus Reviews calls The Promise one of the Best Books of Fiction, and of Literature in Translation, of the year!
* Voted one of the Big Fall Books from Indies by Publishers Weekly & LitHub's Most Anticipated Books of 2019
"The world is ready for her blend of insane Angela Carter with the originality of Clarice Lispector."—Mariana Enriquez, LitHub
"Both her debut story collection, Forgotten Journey, and her only novel, The Promise, are strikingly 20th-century texts, written in a high-modernist mode rarely found in contemporary fiction."—Lily Meyer, NPR
"Silvina Ocampo is the next writer you should be reading."—Michael Silverblatt
A dying woman's attempt to recount the story of her life reveals the fragility of memory and the illusion of identity.
"Of all the words that could define her, the most accurate is, I think, ingenious."—Jorge Luis Borges
"I don't know of another writer who 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 marvelous. Other than Silvina Ocampo, I cannot think of a single writer who, at any time in any language, has chronicled both with such wise and elegant humor."—Alberto Manguel
"Art is the cure for death. A seminal work by an underread master. Required for all students of the human condition."—Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews
"This haunting and vital final work from Ocampo, her only novel, is about a woman's life flashing before her eyes when she's stranded in the ocean. . . . the book’s true power is its depiction of the strength of the mind and the necessity of storytelling, which for the narrator is literally staving off death. Ocampo’s portrait of one woman’s interior life is forceful and full of hope."—Gabe Habash, Starred Review, Publishers Weekly
"Ocampo is beyond great—she is necessary."—Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance
"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."—Italo Calvino
"These two newly translated books could make her a rediscovery on par with Clarice Lispector. . . . there has never been another voice like hers."—John Freeman, Executive Editor, LitHub
"Like William Blake, Ocampo's first voice was that of a visual artist; in her writing she retains the will to unveil immaterial so that we might at least look at it if not touch it."—Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread
A woman traveling on a transatlantic ship has fallen overboard. Adrift at sea, she makes a promise to Saint Rita, "arbiter of the impossible," that if she survives, she will write her life story. As she drifts, she wonders what she might include in the story of her life—a repertoire of miracles, threats, and people parade tumultuously through her mind. Little by little, her imagination begins to commandeer her memories, escaping the strictures of realism.
Translated into English for the very first time, The Promise showcases Silvina Ocampo at her most feminist, idiosyncratic and subversive. Ocampo worked quietly to perfect this novella over the course of twenty-five years, nearly up until the time of her death in 1993.
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Forgotten Journey
"The world is ready for her blend of insane Angela Carter with the originality of Clarice Lispector."—Mariana Enriquez, LitHub
Delicately crafted, intensely visual, deeply personal stories explore the nature of memory, family ties, and the difficult imbalances of love.
"Both her debut story collection, Forgotten Journey, and her only novel, The Promise, are strikingly 20th-century texts, written in a high-modernist mode rarely found in contemporary fiction."—Lily Meyer, NPR
"Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature."––Jorge Luis Borges
"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."—Italo Calvino
"These two newly translated books could make her a rediscovery on par with Clarice Lispector. . . . there has never been another voice like hers."—John Freeman, Executive Editor, LitHub
" . . . it is for the precise and terrible beauty of her sentences that this book should be read.A masterpiece of midcentury modernist literature triumphantly translated into our times."—Publishers Weekly * Starred Review
"Ocampo is beyond great—she is necessary."—Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance and Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University
"Like William Blake, Ocampo's first voice was that of a visual artist; in her writing she retains the will to unveil immaterial so that we might at least look at it if not touch it."—Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread
"Ocampo is a legend of Argentinian literature, and this collection of her short stories brings some of her most recondite and mysterious works to the English-speaking world. . . . This collection is an ideal introduction to a beguiling body of work."—Publishers Weekly
This collection of 28 short stories, first published in 1937 and now in English translation for the first time, introduced readers to one of Argentina's most original and iconic authors. With this, her fiction debut, poet Silvina Ocampo initiated a personal, idiosyncratic exploration of the politics of memory, a theme to which she would return again and again over the course of her unconventional life and productive career.
Praise for Forgotten Journey:
"Ocampo is one of those rare writers who seems to write fiction almost offhandedly, but to still somehow do more in four or five pages than most writers do in twenty. Before you know it, the seemingly mundane has bared its surreal teeth and has you cornered."—Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories
"The Southern Cone queen of the short-story, Ocampo displays all her mastery in Forgotten Journey. After finishing the book, you only want more."—Gabriela Alemán, author of Poso Wells
"Silvina Ocampo's fiction is wondrous, heart-piercing, and fiercely strange. Her fabulism is as charming as Borges’s. Her restless sense of invention foregrounds the brilliant feminist work of writers like Clarice Lispector and Samanta Schweblin. It’s thrilling to have work of this magnitude finally translated into English, head spinning and thrilling."—Alyson Hagy, author of Scribe
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Silvina Ocampo (NYRB Poets)
Silvina Ocampo possessed her own special enchantment as a poet, and only now is her extraordinary poetic achievement becoming more widely recognized beyond Latin America.
Remarkably, this is the first collection of Ocampo’s poetry to appear in English. From her early sonnets on the native Argentine landscape, to her meditations on love’s travails, to her explorations of the kinship between plant and animal realms, to her clairvoyant inquiries into history and myth and memory, readers will find the full range of Ocampo’s “metaphysical lyricism” (The Independent) represented in this groundbreaking edition.
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