The Week of Colors
$18.00
Additional Info
- ISBN: 978-1-949641-89-9
- Size: 5" x 8"
- Pages: 260
- Publication Date: November 11, 2025
- Distributed By: Publishers Group West
Short stories from the “cursed mother of magical realism” (El Mundo), now in English for the first time
A woman flits between two realities centuries apart, as scenes from the violent conquest of Mexico bleed their way into her comfortable contemporary life. Two little girls visit the home of a sorcerer who tortures women named after the days of the week. Girls become dogs, a laborer hides human bones in bricks he’ll use to build a new development, and an old woman appears at an acquaintance’s door one night with a knife and a bone-chilling confession.
With The Week of Colors, Elena Garro laid the groundwork for the literary movements that would shape the landscape of Latin American fiction and beyond. Here you’ll find the early roots of magical realism, feminist horror, and anticolonial speculative fiction. In The Week of Colors, Garro highlights the violence in our history, our homes, and our hearts, in vivid color.
Praise
“Elena Garro is the Tolstoy of Mexico.” —Jorge Luis Borges
“Powerful. Dark. Complex. Books with a basement vault, or a fracture, or both. Nothing is what it seems with Garro; or else everything is something else.”—Cristina Rivera Garza, Cuadrivio
“A brilliant woman of fierce courage.” —Samanta Schweblin, Revista Anfibia
“I think she’s a brilliant writer, one of those writers who come along once in a hundred years. I think she’s the greatest novelist of the 20th century.”—César Aira, Letras libres
“Elena Garro: the cursed mother of magical realism.”—El Mundo
“Elena is a myth, an icon, a one-of-a-kind woman with enormous talent.”—Elena Poniatowska
“Garro’s expertly woven stories showcase her boundless imagination and insightful exploration of the entanglement between national and personal histories. Throughout, McDowell perfectly preserves Garro’s lyricism. . . . This collection highlights what made the author such a seminal figure in Latin American literature.”—Publishers Weekly
Additional Materials
Elena Garro
Elena Garro (1916–1998) was a novelist, playwright, short story writer, journalist, and the inventor of magical realism, though she rejected the term as “a cheap marketing label.” The author of over 40 books, she wrote about the violence embedded in everyday life, with a focus on children, women, and indigenous people.
Books
Elena Garro (1916–1998) was a novelist, playwright, short story writer, journalist, and the inventor of magical realism, though she rejected the term as “a cheap marketing label.” The author of over 40 books, she wrote about the violence embedded in everyday life, with a focus on children, women, and indigenous people.
Megan McDowell
Megan McDowell has translated work by many of the most important contemporary Latin American writers, including Samanta Schweblin, Alejandro Zambra, Mariana Enriquez, Carlos Fonseca, and Lina Meruane. Her translations have won the National Book Award, the English PEN award for Writing in Translation, the Premio Valle-Inclán, the Shirley Jackson Prize, and two O. Henry Prizes, and have been short- or long-listed four times for the International Booker Prize, and shortlisted once for the Kirkus Prize. In 2020 she won an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her short story translations have been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Granta, among others. She is from Richmond, KY and lives in Santiago, Chile.
Books
Megan McDowell has translated work by many of the most important contemporary Latin American writers, including Samanta Schweblin, Alejandro Zambra, Mariana Enriquez, Carlos Fonseca, and Lina Meruane. Her translations have won the National Book Award, the English PEN award for Writing in Translation, the Premio Valle-Inclán, the Shirley Jackson Prize, and two O. Henry Prizes, and have been short- or long-listed four times for the International Booker Prize, and shortlisted once for the Kirkus Prize. In 2020 she won an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her short story translations have been featured in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Tin House, McSweeney’s, and Granta, among others. She is from Richmond, KY and lives in Santiago, Chile.