ABSTRACT
Chapter 16 aims to shed light on the growing presence of twenty-first century Spanish-language Latin American fiction in global markets, particularly through English translations. While paying attention to the material conditions of literary circulation along the lines of so-called World Literature, the following pages attempt to reconstruct a number of specific networks that support this international presence, particularly the networks developed by a highly diverse group of young women writers and their translators into English. It is worth noting that the novels and short stories of these powerful new voices—Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enriquez, Mónica Ojeda, Liliana Colanzi, Fernanda Melchor, and Ariana Harwicz, among others—are increasingly being framed through a Gothic lens. The flexible, hybrid configuration of this “Latin American new Gothic,” which is both locally anchored and global, has sociocultural roots but also serves marketing purposes. The Gothic framing partially explains why these specific stories transcend their vernacular contexts and are published in translation. In what follows, translators Megan McDowell, Sophie Hughes, Sarah Booker, Jessica Sequeira, Carolina Orloff, Sarah Moses, and Annie McDermott will therefore be presented as influential cultural brokers of these innovative imaginaries. However, the above developments are also closely linked to fundamental shifts that have taken place in the international book industry and literary practice in recent decades and to changes in the attitudes of English-speaking institutions and audiences and their views on translated Latin American literature and literary translation as such.
