hungry for what

Violence and desire shatter the smooth surface of the everyday in this exceptional collection of short stories. A game between a woman's father and husband simmers and boils into scalding danger; a daughter creates an elaborate feast for her grieving mother; a solar eclipse burns the emotions and truths of a suppressed neighbourhood into the open. Foregrounding the voices and experiences of women and children and veering from claustrophobic, suffocating suburbia to untamed nature and its great vistas of desert and sky, hungry for what focuses on the terror of normality, prising back its veneer of respectability to reveal the hostility and menace that seethe beneath.

María Bastarós Hernández is an art historian and writer. Her book Historia de España contada a las niñas (2018) was awarded the Puchi Award, the Cálamo Otra Mirada award and the Narrative Award from the Valencian Critics Association. She also works as a screenwriter for drama series and teaches creative writing. No era a esto a lo que veníamos was a finalist in Spain for the Setenil Award for the best collection of short stories and, as hungry for what, is her first book to be published in the English language.