Readers of Dávila’s stories find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to forget them. Lately her work has enjoyed a revival, yet The Houseguest brings her stories to English-language readers for the first time. In 1977 she won the prestigious Xavier Villaurrutia Award. Her first collection, Tiempo destrozado , was published by El Fondo de Cultura Económica in 1959. Their dramatic solution to the problem is typical of the author’s narrative style.ĭávila began as a poet, but it is her stories that gained her fame. The man stalks and terrifies the wife, her children, even her maid. In “The Houseguest,” the story that lends its title to this collection, a woman’s cruelly controlling husband brings a stranger home to live with them. Many of Dávila’s stories have female protagonists who are driven to insanity by their inability to escape oppressive social situations. In the 1950s and ’60s, few Mexican women were acknowledged as literary talents: Rosario Castellanos and Elena Garro were the exceptions. Born in Zacatecas in 1928, she went to the nation’s capital in 1966, where she worked for a time as secretary to Alfonso Reyes, who encouraged her to publish. 122 pages.Īt ninety-one, revered Mexican writer Amparo Dávila has had a long and illustrious life in letters. Translated by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson.
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