Sacrificios humanos by María Fernanda Ampuero

‘Auction’ (from which the collection takes its name and features a protagonist who protects herself from “macho guys” by stuffing “a rooster head between my legs”) is a standout, as is ‘Passion’ in which Ampuero retells the revivification of Christ through the eyes of “another lost girl in a world of lost girls”, a.k.a. The three opening stories – ‘Auction’, ‘Monsters’, and ‘Griselda’ – reverberate with echoes of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, each one of them blood-soaked and brief. However, these sporadic gratuitous blips are balanced out with equally shocking but better-balanced highs. Take ‘Blinds’ which cannonballs into an incest swimming pool at the close for seemingly no other reason than to splash the reader square in the face with repulsion, or the revenge-fantasy-esque ‘Mourning’. If you’re thinking that this could all easily stray over into gratuitousness, you’d be right at points, it does.

This is an animalistic blood-stained, shit-smeared collection of bodily fluids, incest, abuse, and violence, in which men rape, kill, kidnap, and molest and women are auctioned off, abused, and trampled on both literally and metaphorically. But don’t be deterred, because Cockfight also manages to combine its unfiltered darkness and depravity with captivating storytelling and effective recurring motifs of faith, animals, and blood.Īcross a baker’s dozen of short stories, most often centering children or childhood memories, Cockfight distils tales of familial violence behind a bold yellow cover designed by Sukruti Anah Staneley. This post contains affiliate links to independent bookstores.īefore I even started reading Cockfight – the Frances Riddle-translated English-language and fiction debut of Ecuadorian writer María Fernanda Ampuero – a friend voice noted me about it: “Lauren… Cockfight is one of the most fucked up books I think I’ve ever read.” After reading it for myself, I mean…yeah, accurate.

Sacrificios humanos by María Fernanda Ampuero