Thirst

Across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, mortality, and a haunting yearning that will not let them rest. A breakout, genre-blurring novel from one of the most exciting new voices of Latin America’s feminist Gothic.

In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires, on the run from the Church. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and, most importantly, be discreet.

In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother’s terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women - and they cross a threshold from which there’s no turning back.

With echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and written in the vein of feminist Gothic writers like Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Carmen Maria Machado, Thirst plays with the boundaries of genre while exploring the limits of female agency, the consuming power of desire, and the fragile vitality of even the most immortal of creatures.

“It takes courage to write about vampires - they are the greatest of monsters, but also the most trivialised. Marina Yuszczuk manages to bring hers to life in this intimate take on the genre, which also weaves together grief, the history of Buenos Aires, and the voracity of desire.” - Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night

“This gripping tale is full of queer representation and lush, lyrical passages, all while exploring death with an air of nihilism ... Vampires are making a comeback, and Yuszczuk is spearheading their revival with this bloody novel.” - The New York Times

“Two women walk the streets of Buenos Aires two centuries apart. They are connected by exile and blood - the exile of a vampire who fled Europe like so many others, and the exile of a woman on the brink of orphanhood; the blood of kinship and the blood of death. Marina Yuszczuk masterfully blends past and present, the intimate and the historical, and the literary traditions that have shaped Argentine literature into what it is today to create a sensual and deeply personal novel.” - Fernanda Trias, author of Pink Slime