Behind the Gate

Reviews

"Each of these stories is equal parts Hitchcock film and razor blade: austere, immaculately crafted, profoundly unsettling, and capable of cutting you. Amparo Dávila is Kafka by way of Ogawa, Aira by way of Carrington, Cortazár by way of Somers, and I’m so grateful she’s in translation." — Carmen Maria Machado

"Readers of Dávila's stories find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to forget them." — Margaret Randall, World Literature Today

"Extraordinary." — Julio Cortázar

"Her short stories, in which horror grows as an unexplained shadow of the ordinary and the domestic, are classics of a genre that has seen an explosion in recent times, with authors like Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enríquez, and Mónica Ojeda taking up the mantle." — Daniel Saldaña Paris, The Paris Review

"A fixture in the English-speaking cult canon of weird-girl literature." — Andrew Limbong, NPR

"The collection’s heartbeat, like Poe’s “Telltale Heart,” beats from the novel’s floorboards... Behind the Gate reads like a fugue state of lucid dreams sewn together, where the dreamer is aware of the uncanny magical realism and accepts that the strange is possible." — Mia Rhee, Chicago Review of Books

"Readers who love stories about obsession will want this translated collection on their to-read list...Davila’s profile continues to rise in Mexico as a master of the short story." — Kelly Jenson, Book Riot