Diving Board

Praise for Diving Board and Tomás Downey:

“Downey’s haunting, weird tales tend to linger, leaving a discomposing sensation in their wake. But they leave one wanting to move on and find out where his imagination will wander next. His stories have appeared in a number of English language publications, but now with this collection, translated in clear, clean prose by Sarah Moses, a broader introduction to the eerie landscape his characters inhabit is available in one volume.”—Joseph Schreiber, Rough Ghosts

“Opening Diving Board is like waking in a white room with no doors or windows. A question resonates as one reads these stories: How did Tomás Downey place me here so perfectly, and why is it that I don’t want to leave?”—Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender is the Flesh and The Unworthy

“Bizarro fiction is not a genre: it’s a disturbing variant that hides a vague threat, that leaves the reader feeling something between awe and unease. Tomás Downey is an expert in this type of story: cursed childhoods, fantastical plants, sudden deaths, cruel plagues. Via the most brutal realism and the most surprising fantasy, his stories reveal a strange world and a solid storyteller [who writes] with remarkable control, but is capable of moments of intense madness.”—Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night

“…Tomás Downey’s genius lies precisely in the fact that he’s never talking about other worlds, not even metaphorically. This is our world, only shifted a millimetre to the right, shaken ever so slightly, but ours…”—Munir Hachemi, Cuadernos hispanoamericanos

“Tomás Downey always surprises with his stunning imagination, his ability to create worlds in miniature (as maddening and solid as ours), his power of observation; with spare prose that is at once ambiguous and disturbing; with an inquiry into what we are and how we relate to one another.”—Luciano Lamberti

“…an amalgam of realist science fiction that’s more plausible than reality…with touches of comedy and nightmare.”—Daniel Gigena, La Nación

“The reader moves through discomfort, cheery complicity, a certain revulsion, and ongoing unease, silently perceiving that what happens here, in the stories in El lugar donde mueren los pájaros, poses questions from a place that suspends all answers. A precise and controlled style; intelligent and original plots in which more is shown than said; and an effective use of narrative tension are some of the reasons it’s worth visiting this literary universe.”—Laura Cardona, La Nación