Argues for Ocampo's multifaceted development of ambiguity in various media and genres on the levels of language, plot and gender. The critical essays in this volume are dedicated to the works of Argentine writer Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) and introduce readers more fully to a figure who has long been a kind of insider's secret among intellectuals of her country. As the title suggests, the purpose of the volume is to move beyond the codification of Ocampo's use of the supernatural, an early oversimplification of her work. The essays address the quirkiness, cruelty, violence, and overtsexuality of her works, elements which have impeded a full understanding of her creative vision. Here it becomes clear that Silvina Ocampo was a co-contributor to the literary enterprise of the Sur generation, which produced Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Victoria Ocampo, and had a profound influence on writers of the younger generation, such as Alejandra Pizarnik, Sylvia Molloy, Marjorie Agosin and others. Patricia N. Klingenbergis Professor of Latin American literature at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. Fernanda Zullo-Ruiz is Associate Professor of Spanish at Hanover College in Hanover, Indiana.

The works of Argentine writer Silvina Ocampo (1903–93) are enjoying unprecedented attention from international scholars, writers, journalists, translators and film directors. This book explores the reason for the growing interest, and how it connects with her transgressive representations of motherhood and childhood. By overlapping themes from past scholarship (such as childhood, gender representations, the fantastic and sexuality), new and diverse issues intersect, contradict or revise previous interpretations of Ocampo’s works and her place in Argentine letters. Specifically, the much-overlooked mother/child dyad will offer a unique vantage point for this volume, bringing to the surface disparities concerning age, gender, sexuality, knowledge, agency and voice, often ignored or minimised in theoretical frameworks and popular narratives. This focus on the spaces of motherhood and childhood maps out Ocampo’s consistent refusal to prioritise one space over another, or to legitimise one voice over another, which highlights a radical theorisation of subjectivities in flux.