Little known in the English-speaking world during his lifetime, Argentinian author Antonio Di Benedetto is considered by many to be one of the great 20th-century Latin American writers, working in the same tradition as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez. Nest in the Bones, translated for the first time by Martina Broner, collects short works of fiction from Di Benedetto's career, showing an impressive swath of subjects, emotions and perspectives.
Ranging from a few pages to novella-length, the works in Nest in the Bones explore faith, love, family and loss. "Aballay," one of the longer pieces, follows a penitent man who remains upon a horse for years as a form of hermetic piety. It's strange and funny, never playing the man's odd decision to remain equine-bound for laughs, but well aware how both odd and deadly serious the man's life has become. "Very Early Morning in the Cemetery," the last story in the collection, might be the most brutally funny. There, a brother and sister command men to crush their father's embalmed corpse in order to properly bury him beside his recently deceased wife (there being room in neither her grave nor his tomb). It's ghastly, but a testament to the ridiculous lengths people will go to keep up tradition.
Readers with a love of Latin American authors will find Di Benedetto a welcome addition to the canon that's available in English. --Noah Cruickshank, adult engagement manager, the Field Museum, Chicago, Ill.