Craft Corner: The Millions Interviews Samanta Schweblin
Samanta Schweblin’s absolutely terrifying second novel, Distancia de Rescate, published in America as Fever Dream and nominated for the Booker Prize, was among many readers’ and critics’ favorites of 2017. Her third novel, Little Eyes, published in May of this year, is somewhat less frightening, though equally compelling, and has received much the same rapturous praise—as J. Robert Lennon writes in his glowing New York Times piece, “I cannot remember a book so efficient in establishing character and propelling narrative; there’s material for a hundred novels in these deft, rich 237 pages.”
Little Eyes centers around a pop-culture phenomenon, spawned in Japan, called the Kentuki, cute little animatronic animal creatures with cameras in their eyes. For a few hundred bucks, people buy Kentukis, or buy the right to inhabit a Kentuki. In this way, Keepers are paired with Dwellers, strangers who often live on opposite sides of the globe. With this deceptively simple, very creepy premise, Schweblin masterfully intertwines multiple characters’ lives in this slim, audacious novel that speaks with oblique force to our present moment.
Schweblin was gracious enough to answer a few questions about her writing process, via her long-time translator, Megan McDowell.
