Good and Evil and Other Stories

Samanta Schweblin

Sep 2025 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Frankie Corzo, Alma Cuervo, Jamie K. Brown, Victoria Villarreal, Annette Amelia Oliveira, and Ina Barron

About this audiobook

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A haunting, unforgettable collection of tales by Samanta Schweblin, winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature and three-time Booker Prize finalist

"The stories of “Good and Evil” are powerfully evocative and unsettling. They seem to hover, indeed like fever dreams, between the reassuring familiarities of domestic life and the stark, unpredictable, visionary flights of the unconscious.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

“The most brilliant writer of short stories writing today, she now delivers her most haunting, fierce and provocative book.”—Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive

"Schweblin creates characters whose lifelines reach some of the most extraordinary questions ever articulated in our literature." —Karen Russell, author of The Antidote and Swamplandia!

“Remarkably taut, clear, precise, and yet capable of capturing the extent of our human messiness, these stories are perfect for the times we dwell inside.” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

The characters of Good and Evil find themselves at a point of no return, dazzled by the glare of impending tragedy. Vulnerable and profoundly human, they become trapped in the instant in which the uncanny has lurched into their lives. Some are transformed, some are isolated, others waver between guilt or tenderness. All of them are driven by uncertainty.

Schweblin’s prose uses tension and truth to construct a literary universe in which the monsters of everyday life come so close to us that we can almost feel their breath. Her writing provokes awe and disquiet, a state of alarm that at the same time transports us to a hypnotic world as recognizable as it is strange.

About the author

SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN won the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature for her story collection Seven Empty Houses. Her debut novel, Fever Dream, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, and her novel Little Eyes and story collection Mouthful of Birds have been longlisted for the same prize. Her books have been translated into more than forty languages, and her stories have appeared in English in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere. Originally from Buenos Aires, Schweblin lives in Berlin.

MEGAN MCDOWELL has translated many of the most important Spanish-language writers working today. Her translations have won the National Book Award for Translated Literature and the English PEN Award, and have been nominated for the International Booker Prize (four times). In 2020, she won an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.