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. M… - Mariana Enriquez

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 am a writer who works in her country, who never lived anywhere else, who maybe will one day, but whose life has transpired in a large American metropolis with all its intensity, its often joyful — and other times desperate — people, its power outages, its bodies in the streets, its beauty and its horror.

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 two ways to deal with that. Get angry at the inequality. Or try to explain what’s going on.