Carlos Mario Mejía Suárez (Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures) published with Ápeiron ediciones (Madrid, Spain) his novella La máquina de Hotefes contra las tebiras [Hotefes’ Machine Against the Tebirae] on September 9, 2024. The novel is published after receiving a positive recommendation in the Gregorio Samsa contest (Ápeiron).
The novella takes place in a post-apocaliptic South American country, where the last remnants of civilization survive around authoritarian and industrial work settlements, called tebirae. One day, a strangely shaped man arrives at a tebira that produces pillows and guns for a distant war. In exchange for sharing with the administrators of the tebira a metal he recently found in his travels to an abandoned city, he is given a room to test a machine he has dreamt, but whose function and purpose he doesn’t know. He recruits six volunteers to undertake experiments with his machine. What lies behind the both wonderous and terrifying machine trials? What will the tebira administration do to curtail the possible transgressions of this machine?
The novella is available in the Ápeiron ediciones website.