Northeastern Gothic
by Christiano Aguiar
Alfaguara, 2022
136 pages
15×23 cm
In these stories, the author delves into gothic and folk elements, mixing real and supernatural horrors with a dreamlike, surrealistic style. He seeks his references in television series, movies and comics to create narratives far from the traditional literary prose. The stories wave from the far past, through the military dictatorship and push as far as the darkness of the near future.
A boy is obliged to cross the open field near the village of Riachão da Frente to deliver a letter his mother wrote to Zé Barbatão, the local cangaceiro (a rebel and an outlaw). At dawn, the shadows on the path and the bandits’ threat grow as the narrative progresses, and reality itself seems on the verge of being torn apart. Anda-luz (Gone in the Light), the story that opens this volume, foreshadows what will come in the following eight tales.
An evil kangaroo, a world hunted by bloody and clever jaguars, a grandmother who finds her way to come back from the dead… In Gótico nordestino, Cristhiano Aguiar walks between dream and reality, dialogues with several genres and composes a collection quite different from what we’re all used to.
«Gótico nordestino fits prominenttly in the new wave of horror narratives, reinventing the timeless fear of what lies beyond rationality. Cristhiano Aguiar finds a synthesis between the anglo-american pop culture and the distinctive features of his own Southern American reality. His sparkling and powerful pieces show the reader how terror is the real key to understand our times.»
Antônio Xerxenesky
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Cristhiano Aguiar was born in Campina Grande, in the Paraíba region. He is a writer, literary critic, teacher and author of Narrativas e espaços ficcionais: uma introdução (Narratives and fictional places: an introduction) and the short stories collection Na outra margem, o Leviatã (On the Other Side, the Leviathan). He’s a frequent contributor of Revista Pessoa and Suplemento Literário Pernambuco.
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