Set in a stark landscape of cliffs and precipices high above the Argentine pampas, Mariana Travacio’s All That Dies in April follows the members of one small family as each makes a solitary journey out of their treacherous mountain home in search of a better life.
"Hypnotic, almost ancestral voices echo through this novel like whispers in the wilderness, like orphan cries and wounds of light accompanying us on a powerful journey from which none of us will emerge unscathed." —Agustina Bazterrica, bestselling author of Tender is the Flesh
Lina has dreamt for years of leaving her tiny village in the drought-stricken region. Her son left long ago to find work and a better fortune. Relicario, her husband, is content to stay put in the land of his ancestors, tending to their graves. Ignoring Relicario’s pleas, a desperate Lina decides to abandon their home in search of her son, work, and water. She starts her journey on foot, and Relicario eventually follows behind, bringing a donkey and a sack with his ancestors’ bones. Both witness unspeakable violence, cruelty, and folly, but the hope of reuniting their family keeps them alive.
Poetically charged, restrained, and delicately condensed, this is a suspenseful ancestral tale rooted in a long Latin American history of rural displacement and perpetual inequality.
Mariana Travacio is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of the novels All That Dies in April and Como si existiese el perdón, as well as three short story collections. A former forensic psychologist and psychology professor, she was born in Rosario, grew up in São Paulo, and lives in Buenos Aires. Her stories have appeared in English in Latin American Literature Today and Two Lines Journal. Her work has been translated into over six languages. All That Dies in April was a finalist for the Tigre Juan Award 2022 and is her first work to be published in English.
Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders, which has published 4,400 writers from 139 countries since the online magazine launched in 2003. As a translator from Spanish, she is the recipient of a 2023 National Endowment of the Arts Literature Fellowship to translate eminent Mexican author Carmen Boullosa’s novel El complot de los románticos as well as a 2024 Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin to translate Irati Elorrieta’s award-winning debut novel, Luces de invierno.
Will Morningstar is a book editor and translator whose work is featured in Deep Vellum's Best Literary Translations 2025 anthology and has appeared in journals such as the New England Review, ANMLY, Two Lines, Latin American Literature Today, Strange Horizons, and the Massachusetts Review, as well as in museums and cultural institutions throughout Spain. He is the publisher of Boston-based Diptych Press, a new initiative to foster dialogue about literature from around the world.
