The Most Horrifying Look at Monsanto Yet
April 22, 2019
“Fear is the best weapon to awaken the reader,” says Samanta Schweblin, the acclaimed Argentine author of “Fever Dream.” “Fear is what makes you drop a book and run to your computer to Google what is happening, and think, ‘Can this happen to me? Is this really happening?’”
“Fever Dream” certainly terrified readers across the globe after it was translated from Spanish into more than a dozen languages over the past few years. It was first published in English in 2017 and received ample critical acclaim, in part due to her considerable talent as a writer, but also due to the timeliness of the subject at hand: the horrors companies such as agrochemical giant Monsanto have inflicted on the planet and us all.
In her novella, however, Schweblin never names Monsanto, but rather tells the spine-chilling tale of Amanda, a city-dweller, mysteriously dying during a vacation to the countryside. Where does this horror story take place? you may ask. The answer is anywhere, given the multinational company’s harrowing reach. On her deathbed, Amanda is visited by a child who attempts to lead her and, perhaps more importantly, Schweblin’s readers, toward the realization that is likely on the tip of many readers’ tongues as the seemingly fictional ailments and occurrences start to form a familiar pattern. Wake up, the ghostly David seems to tell us as we all lie on our laurels during the planet’s death throes. “That’s the story we need to understand […] Don’t get distracted,” the child repeats over and over.
It is precisely as the global public begins to wake up, in large part thanks to young activists such as the courageous Greta Thunberg, to the barbarous damage done to the planet in the name of boundless greed that stories such as Schweblin’s can become an important tool in the fight against climate inaction. But this fever dream that feels inescapable currently is not just about climate change. According to writer Patricia Stuelke, “the recent resurgence of horror in feminist literary fiction in Argentina [and] the United States,” of which she considers Schweblin’s “Fever Dream” a prime example, is also undeniably a product of capitalism. Schweblin’s work,
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-most-horrifying-look-at-monsanto-yet/
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