In this haunting Argentine gothic, the vampire isn’t a glamorous predator but a creature driven by instinct—feral, tragic, and devastatingly human. Marina Yuszczuk’s Thirst, translated by Heather Cleary, breathes new (undead) life into the vampire novel, weaving a queer, feminist narrative that shifts between 19th-century Buenos Aires and its modern-day counterpart. The result is an eerie and lyrical meditation on desire, decay, and the violent inheritance of womanhood.
The novel opens with the vampire as a child, taken by her mother and given over to the man who will eventually transform her. From the beginning, Thirst is deeply concerned with the bond between mothers and daughters—and the ways that bond can be both protective and damning. In the present day, the unnamed narrator grapples with her own mother’s slow death while caring for her young son. Grief unmoors her, and she finds herself wandering the cemetery where she first encounters the vampire. What begins as curiosity blooms into obsession, desire, and something even darker.
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