El Diablo sabe mi nombre

“Jacinta Escudos’ texts are a gaze that subverts the real, the univocal vision of literary realism. Not so as to evade that reality, but to attain a deeper vision (…) Escudos is one of the most outstanding representatives of this tendency in Central American literature today.”
Lilian Fernández Hall

These short stories create their own universe where everything is allowed: transformations, parallel realities, splits, anthropophagy, mutations. The tales that make up El Diablo sabe mi nombre (The Devil Knows My Name) are very different from one another, but they have two questions in common. On the one hand, transgression, the desire to step beyond a frontier that is normally uncrossable: the frontiers between the male and female sexes, between humans and animals, between madness and sanity, or between life and death. On the other hand, the oneiric: over half of the 14 tales were dreams of the author that she transformed into tales without trying to subject them to a rational interpretation, allowing the darkness to talk, exploring those deep zones that we do not fully understand. Their fantastic character is what unites them as a book. Although this book evinces a deep disgust with human beings who destroy their environment and, above all, an evident rebellion against the roles imposed on men and women, the great majority of the tales are about characters who do something to change their lot. 

Jacinta Escudos is Salvadorian. She writes novels, short stories, journalistic chronicles and essays. Winner of the X Floral Games of El Salvador 2001, short story section, for her book Crónicas para sentimentales (Chronicles for the Sentimental) and the 1^st “Mario Monteforte Toledo” Central American Prize for Fiction (2003), for her novel A-B-Sudario (A-B-Shroud). Her writings have been translated into English, German and French. Her work appears in numerous anthologies published in Latin America, the United States and Europe.