Winter in Sokcho

Short stories from the “cursed mother of magical realism” (El Mundo), now in English for the first time 

A woman flits between two realities centuries apart, as scenes from the violent conquest of Mexico bleed their way into her comfortable contemporary life. Two little girls visit the home of a sorcerer who tortures women named after the days of the week. Girls become dogs, a laborer hides human bones in bricks he’ll use to build a new development, and an old woman appears at an acquaintance’s door one night with a knife and a bone-chilling confession.

With The Week of Colors, Elena Garro laid the groundwork for the literary movements that would shape the landscape of Latin American fiction and beyond. Here you’ll find the early roots of magical realism, feminist horror, and anticolonial speculative fiction. In The Week of Colors, Garro highlights the violence in our history, our homes, and our hearts, in vivid color.

Elisa Shua Dusapin, is a Franco-Swiss writer, with Korean origins through her mother, currently living in Switzerland.

Aneesa Abbas Higgins has been translating literary works from French for the past ten years. Before becoming a translator they taught French for many years. In addition to winning the National Book Award in 2021 for their translation of Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin, their work was named the winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize (A Girl Called Eel by Ali Zamir) in 2020, and was twice shortlisted for that same award. Their published translations include works by Nina Bouraoui, Tahar Ben Jelloun, François Garde and Vénus Khoury-Ghata. Their translations have also appeared in Words Without Borders and Asymptote