Biography
Today practically everything can be defined. It’s a good thing for there to be a little novel that can’t be defined.
Iosi Havilio
Iosi Havilio (b. 1974 Buenos Aires) became a cult author in Argentina after his debut novel Open Door (And Other Stories, 2011) was highly praised by the outspoken and influential writer Rodolfo Fogwill and by influential Argentine critic, Beatriz Sarlo. Paradises (And Other Stories, 2013) was similarly acclaimed. Petite Fleur (And Other Stories, 2017) is his fifth novel. Drawing comparisons with writers as diverse as Camus and Houellebecq, critics agree only that Havilio has one of the most unique voices in literature today.
Reviews
Chloe Aridjis
‘With minimalist beauty and exquisite strangeness, Iosi Havilio offers a mesmerising addition to the literature of solitude.’
Martin Schifino
The Independent
‘Iosi Havilio’s remarkable first novel brings news of an intriguing world’
The Economist
‘An ambiguous tale that verges on dark comedy … With skill and subtlety, the novel hints that a whole society might labour under an illusion of liberty.’
Fatema Ahmed
Prospect
‘Deliberately unshowy, so that plot twists can unfold in the quietest ways.’
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
‘There is a lot of sex and violence in Open Door, but it is never gratuitous. … You have in your hands a masterpiece.’
Margaret Jull Costa
In Other Words (journal of the British Centre for Literary Translation)
‘A moving and highly original novel. A good translation is one that convinces as a work in its own right. That is what we get here.’
Amanda Hopkinson
The Independent
‘Iosi Havilio has caused a literary storm in Argentina. … His creation is of an inverted “paradise”, urban squalor a pole apart from the gardens of Paradise. It well reflects the inequalities and iniquities left by Argentina’s financial collapse at the turn of this century. This is the aftermath of an apocalypse.’
Beatriz Sarlo
‘Havilio has found just the right tone and understated register to describe extremity. Paradises takes place in an irresistible, ghostly normality.’
Revista Tónica
‘In contemporary Argentine literature, Paradises is an almost perfect novel.’
Fabián Casas, author of Los Lemmings
‘In his novels we find the invisible and essential work that only great writers are capable of.’
Gorse
‘This is a novel which follows its own rules, and it works — on its own terms.’
Yuri Herrera
‘As vertiginous, airtight and intense as a dream.’
Le Figaro
‘You’ll read Petite Fleur in a single sitting, carried along by the lively rhythm and a wacky plot leavened by a blend of darkness and cruelty. We don’t often come across this kind of novel, a drama played for laughs.’
Marie Claire (France)
‘An absolute masterpiece.’
The Economist
'An ambiguous tale that verges on dark comedy . . . With skill and subtlety, the novel hints that a whole society might labour under an illusion of liberty.’
Amanda Hopkinson
The Independent
A haunting tale set in the aftermath of an apocalypse . . . Iosi Havilio has caused a literary storm in Argentina’
Fatema Ahmed
Prospect
‘Deliberately unshowy, so that plot twists can unfold in the quietest ways.’
Chloe Aridjis
‘With minimalist beauty and exquisite strangeness, Iosi Havilio offers a mesmerising addition to the literature of solitude.’
Nick DiMartino
Shelf Awareness
‘Havilio’s passion lies with the powerless. An inexhaustible stream of eccentric, believable characters, the down-and-out, downtrodden marginal citizens of Buenos Aires, parades through his fiction.'