Praise for A Carnival of Atrocities

"A Carnival of Atrocities is a marvel of creative fire that takes uniquely unexpected turns, yet it has parallels with both Hanging Rock and The Leftovers in that its drama centers on the unexplained disappearance of several people, who wander off toward "the crag," while those left behind reexamine and ultimately reinvent their faith." -Los Angeles Review of Books

"For those with an appetite for lyrical absurdity, this dark and demanding journey into a bedeviled nightwill repay the effort. There are echoes of Samuel Beckett in portions of this mordant fable, but Garcia Freire'sdreamy poetry is her own." -The Arts Fuse

"In Ecuadoran writer Natalia García Freire's latest novel, A Carnival of Atrocities, rising from the landscape is a swirling, multivocal, and vivid portrait of a small town torn apart by prejudices and suspicion. There may be something rotten buried deep in the earth-but perhaps it is history itself. With an expert, distinguished lyricism translated melodiously by Victor Meadowcroft, García Freire aims her incisive sights on the violence and hatred that pervade amidst dissenting belief systems, gesturing towards the ways a limited, desperate existence can further inhibit our shortsighted perspectives." -Asymptote

"Entrancing in its imagery and themes, A Carnival of Atrocities promises exactly what its title evokes: a nightmarish journey into the depravity of the human soul." -Hola Cultura

"A Carnival of Atrocities tracks the breakdown of a destructive social ecology, bringing about not a triumphant restoration of the natural order but instead something stranger and more ambiguous. Even the brief glimpses of the lives destroyed prove affecting, but the novel's final images, seen through the eyes of Filatelio as he lays his beloved Diosmadre to rest in flowing water, deliver a moving catharsis. Natalia García Freire's writing shocks, confounds, and fascinates; this carnival proves well worth the ride."-Ancillary Review of Books

"Years ago, in a town between the steaming jungle and the frigid Andes-a town soon to slip out of existence-a girl was wronged. Mildred was born in Cocuán, and it was there that she had centered her life, but after her mother died, everything-her animals, her home, and her lands-was taken from her. Now, strange things keep happening; there's collective delirium and a shadow of death that hangs over the town, and people think it's Mildred come to take her revenge."-Book Riot, The Biggest Books Out this Spring (BIPOC Edition 2025)

"Set against the backdrop of a remote town in Ecuador, Natalia García Freire's newly-translated novel A Carnival of Atrocities (translated by Victor Meadowcroft) is a tale of a community haunted by its past." -Reactor Mag

"What an event! Natalia García Freire conjures up an ancient forest and sets language and its roots alight, including the living and dead. Marvelous, dazzling, celebratory writing. I can't say it enough: read it!" -MARÍA SÁNCHEZ, author of Land of Women

"The language in this novel weaves together miracles, curses, and deliriums. Natalia García Freire creates disturbing and beautiful books that remind one of the poetic cruelty of far-off mythologies." -IRENE VALLEJO, author of the international bestseller Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World

"This is the story of a town, Cocuán, told through its characters. A story with hints of fable, myth, madness, death, innocence, evil ... It's amazing, as always." -ANDREA CARRASCO, ABC

"In A Carnival of Atrocities, the story of poor Mildred, banished, dispossessed, and ostracized, is preserved in Mother Earth, Pachamama, in Cocuán." -INÉS GARCÍA, Libero Editorial

"In Natalia García Freire's literary universe, everything that was destined to remain a secret, hidden away, has come to light: the wind, the birds, the forest. She writes from the ground level, somewhere between the ferocity of Flannery O'Connor and the sinister nature of Shirley Jackson-it will leave no one indifferent. Hers is a mad and disturbing universe." -CRISTINA SÁNCHEZ ANDRADE, author of The Winterlings

"A beautiful and terrible book." -JOSEP NADAL SUAU, El Cultural

Praise for This World Does Not Belong to Us

"Disquieting and visceral. ... García Freire unearths a brilliant sense of the miraculous from the swarming and putrid subject matter. The result is beautifully macabre." -Publishers Weekly, starred review

"One of the debut novels that most stood out this year in Latin America." -New York Times

"A wronged, bitter young man welcomes his fate in Natalia García Freire's novel This World Does Not Belong to Us. Lucas was just a child when his father sold him to another farmer as a laborer. Years later, Lucas returns, full of resentment and burning for revenge. ... Visceral prose captures Lucas's obsession with death, bugs, and other unpleasant aspects of life. ... There is a strange, unconventional beauty to his morbid world-a beauty that helps him endure pain and humiliation and achieve an unnerving final calm. This World Does Not Belong to Us is a bleak exploration of how all ends in death and decay." -Foreword Reviews

"A deliciously menacing read which I just couldn't put down. Every word punches hard. This World Does Not Belong to Us treads the fine line between beauty and horror effortlessly." -JAN CARSON, author of The Raptures