The Ghost of you

A collection of short stories by Peruvian American academic Margarita Saona. Margarita Saona's sparse, clinically precise yet mysterious prose casts a spell upon her readers. Nothing says post-anthropocentric like Saona’s stories. Her characters, resisting gender and other labels inhabit cities that while existing in the real world, refuse to be pinned down on a map. In Saona’s stories, animals behave like humans, humans, like animals, or the elements, in a relentless phantasmagoria reminiscent of ancient mythology. This disembodiment is present in Saona’s narrative style, having herself hovered between life and death shortly before receiving a life-saving new heart. The English translation, The Ghost of You, originally titled in Spanish La ciudad donde no estás, gives these ghosts an English-speaking home, in the hopes they can remain in the memory of their readers the same way someone’s presence stills haunts a place.