After five acclaimed novels published in Europe and Latin America, writer Santiago Nazarian flexes his short-story vein in Pornofantasma, his debut in the genre. Unconcerned with concise stories, Nazarian created fourteen plots—some not so short, bordering on soap operas—"about sex and death," as he himself describes them.
The schizophrenic relationships, lost youth, fable-like tone, and romantic violence present in his previous works reinforce the author's signature style here, but with added doses of fantasy. Everyday, apocalyptic, and supernatural terrors emerge, fueled by a latent and ambiguous sexuality.
The allusions to classic figures from literature and horror films present in the stories, which focus on ghost towns and ships, serial killers, vampires, zombies, werewolves, and dragons, also serve, for the most part, as metaphors for more human themes. A fusion of references that form a bizarre existentialism, breaking down gender barriers and addressing values so universal, so timeless.
In the texts, the association of sexuality with death — taking advantage of a classic cliché of horror films — is treated not as a moralistic vision, but to symbolize the loss of innocence, the awakening of sexuality in adolescence, bringing the death of the child or the inability of the adult to accept his maturity.
