One issue is that we’re used to reading in translation and other countries aren’t. We know more about your history than you know about ours. There’s … - Mariana Enriquez

I understand the [notion of] respect but I don’t want to be complicit in any kind of silence; to be timid about horrifying things is dangerous too. Maybe I turn up the volume to 11 because of the genre I like to work in, but the genre puts a light on the real horror that gets lost in [a phrase like] “political violence”.

It’s very difficult to write about Argentina using only realism. In the 50s and 60s there was a strong tradition of fantastical fiction here: Borges, Silvina Ocampo, Julio Cortázar. Then the whole region became politicised with the dictatorship [1976-1983], the consequences of the Cuban revolution and the intervention of America.

I think no one really chooses their tastes or their modes of expression: One day a language appears, and finding a language is a lot like finding a home. When I discovered horror cinema and literature, I found my language — the one that allowed me to talk about the terrors I have known. My language was formed by Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”; the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar and Stephen King; “Frankenstein”; “The Exorcist”; “Jaws” and “E.T.”; and later by “Twin Peaks”; rock and punk music; David Cronenberg; Clive Barker and fanzines.