Although the collection [Strange Things Happen Here] is prosaically subtitled "Twenty-six Short Stories and a Novel," it comprises a variety of forms, from single-page sketches to a novella-length fiction [He Who Searches] that shifts scene and point of view with unnerving abandon.

Throughout, these pieces offer a surrealistic picture of life in a fascist state. Though the themes of the stories vary from sex Luisa Valenzuela 1938– Photograph by Layle Silbertto politics to philosophical quest, in each one the threat of violence lurks close to the surface. Valenzuela's Argentina is a place where any ordinary parcel may contain a bomb, where any car may belong to the secret police, where even the conversation of children turns to talk of guns….

On the whole,… the collection gives a vivid, eerie, and affecting sense of life in a society where a cruel tension is the governing condition.

[Amanda Y. Heller...