Seven Empty Houses

Seven Empty Houses is a story collection by the Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell. First published in Spanish in 2015 as Siete casas vacías, the book gathers seven unsettling stories, each centered on a house and on the people who live in, visit or intrude upon it. Parents and children, couples and strangers move through homes that become charged with grief, obsession and quiet menace, and ordinary domestic scenes slide toward the uncanny. The stories explore home and belonging, the fragility of human connection, the loss of love and memory, and the ways parents fail their children, all told with the eerie atmosphere and spare style for which Schweblin is known. The collection won the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature.