Little eyes - Samanta Schweblin

'She has a gift for fiction that is pure, original, revelatory.' El Pas

ANew YorkTimesNotable Book of 2020

They're not pets. Not ghosts or robots. These are kentukis, and they are in your home. They're everywhere. They're watching you

They've infiltrated apartments in Hong Kong, shops in Vancouver, the streets of Sierra Leone, town squares of Oaxaca, schools in Tel Aviv, bedrooms in Indiana. Anonymous and untraceable, these seemingly cute cuddly toys reveal the beauty of connection between far-flung souls - but they also expose the ugly truth of our interconnected society.

Samanta Schweblin's wildly imaginative new novel pulls us into a dark and complex world of unexpected love, playful encounters and marvellous adventures. But beneath the cuddly exterior, kentukis conceal a truth that is unsettlingly familiar and exhilaratingly real. This is our present and we're living it - we just don't know it yet.

*Little Eyescomes with two different covers, and the cover you receive will be chosen at random*

Samanta Schweblinis the author of three story collections that have won numerous awards, including the prestigious Juan Rulfo Story Prize, and most recently, a Man Booker International Prize longlisting for Mouthful of Birds (Oneworld, 2019). Her debut novelFever Dreamwas shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2017. Originally from Buenos Aires, she lives in Berlin.



Megan McDowellhas translated books by many contemporary South American and Spanish authors, and her translations have been published inThe New Yorker, Harper'sandThe Paris Review. She lives in Chile.

'Ingenious...An artful exploration of solitude and empathy in a globalised world… In a nimble, fast-moving narrative, what's most impressive is the way she foregrounds her characters' inner hopes and fears.'

'Disturbing... Schweblin enjoys hovering just above the normal. Inspired by Samuel Beckett, she is interested in exposing absurdities.'

'Little Eyes makes for masterfully uneasy reading; it's a book that burrows under your skin.'

'I cannot remember a book so efficient in establishing character and propelling narrative; there's material for a hundred novels in these deft, rich 242 pages...The writing, ably translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is superb, fully living up to the promise of Schweblin's stunning previous novel, Fever Dream... A slim volume as expansive and ambitious as an epic.'

'A timely meditation on humanity and technology.'

'Little Eyesprovides us with a powerful examination of the underlining disparities that persist. It is a fable for a society in which we are all made to feel simultaneously exposed and anonymous, connected and alone.'

'Little Eyes acts as a clear warning that every digital decision we make has consequences... It does feel alarmingly real.'

'This dazzling inquiry into loneliness and connection...has been given added resonance by the atomisation of lockdown.'

'A dark story, beautifully translated by Megan McDowell, it leaves the reader in a world from which there is no escape, as it questions our growing complicity in social media and neocapitalist technologies.'

'Creepy as hell.'

'Enjoyable reading… rif?ng on everyday human foibles - jealousy, capriciousness, existential restlessness…the understatedly arch tone is well served by Megan McDowell's translation, which is so slick that one hardly seems to be reading a translated work.'

'Daring and original... Schweblin deftly explores both the loneliness and casual cruelty that can inform our attempts to connect in this modern world.'

'Ifyou want a spookily prescient vision of human isolation both assuaged and deepened by inscrutable, glitch-prone tech, thenLittle Eyesmore than fits the brief...Adroitly served by Megan McDowell's winningly deadpan translation, these stories deal not in 'truly brutal plots' but 'desperately human and quotidian' urges, fears and scams...In the middle of our stay-at-home, broadband-enabled apocalypse, that feels right.'

'The 'toys' Schweblin has created are the perfect hybrid between a pet and a social network, enabling her to dissect problems that touch all of our lives: the dark side of the internet; the global epidemic of loneliness; the dumb inertia that leads usto jump on board with the latest trend… As always in the worlds Schweblin creates,the real monsters are to be found not in the outside world, but inside each of us.'

'A dystopian novel that is necessary, hypnotic, irresistible.'

'This brilliant and disturbing book resembles Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale in how it speculates…Schweblin unspools a disquieting portrait of the dark sides of connectivity and the kinds of animalistic cyborgs it can make of us, as we walk through barriers that even spirits cannot cross.'