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When the Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin was 12 years old, she decided to stop talking.
It was shockingly simple.
Words abandoned me, she says now.
They werent sufficiently precise to explain to the world what my grievance was.
So she did the only reasonable thing a 12 year old could do: She became mute.
We think of a silent world as a constricted one.
But for Schweblin, it became a space to flourish.
[Spoken] language has always bothered me, she says.
Spending her day with books was a significant improvement over having to talk to people.
So after a year of silence, she begrudgingly reentered the land of speech.
I was constantly reading, I started writing, and my interior world was enormous.
But there is no escaping the curiosity of her fans.
Her rise seems swift, but as with so many non-English writers, its been a long time coming.
Anglophone readers have a lot of catching up to do.
The fault is not entirely that of America and its aversion to translated literature.
If a book of mine were to be published in English, it would have to do really well.
Because if a translation was done and the book didnt really sell, then that book is dead.
That book only has one chance.
Rarely, if ever, is the horror named.
It is simply felt.
Nothing can be trusted.
InMouthful of Birds, opening lines put us on alert.
Schweblin also feels right about the timing of her U.S. arrival.
I really wanted to live abroad.
Not because of Buenos Aires I love Buenos Aires.
But just for the sake of being somewhere else.
Our conversation keeps circling back to Argentina.
Perhaps there is simply some inherent melancholy in the culture.
Perhaps its a high tolerance for the absurdity of the nations politics.
The Argentinian capacity to imagine and experience tragedy has always been copious.
Schweblin is thankful for their legacy, but also delicately suggests the need to move forward.
Its a bit disconcerting.
Or the late Argentinian Hebe Uhart, whos also just being translated now.
Or Mario Benedetti; Eliecer Cardenas; Maria Luisa Puga the list can go on.
As I said, theres a lot of catching up to do.
Berlin also helped in practical terms, thanks to her fellowship.
I had an entire year where I didnt do anything other than write, she says.
The first three years in Berlin were the three most productive years of my life.
Were quite provincial, us Argentinians, she says.
Argentina is so far away from everything, its even far away from the rest of Latin America.
Its something an Argentinian doesnt realize until they leave.
You could say much the same thing about American readers as well.
