Como bestias by Violaine Bérot

Berot’s work operates as a fable that refuses the comfort of simplicity, layering multiple narratives into a single, devastating tale about the violence that hides beneath the surface of forgotten communities. From the beginning, the author weaves magical realism into the fabric of her storytelling, allowing wonder to coexist with brutality, myth with the everyday cruelties of populations in unknown places abandoned by government and institutions. This blending of the magical with the real becomes the key through which we begin to understand these worlds.

What makes this collection extraordinary is how it brings these scattered communities to vivid, suffocating life and reveals what lies beneath their surfaces. Everyone knows everyone else, yet the most terrible truths remain invisible: bullying, unspeakable acts, and institutional failure pulse beneath a carefully maintained appearance of peace. It is precisely in response to this unbearable reality that the impossible emerges. Berot suggests something devastating: in a world where institutions fail, only magic offers a path toward both mercy and survival, granting deliverance to those who deserve it. Through this fable, she reminds us that true realism demands we make room for wonder.

Yes, it is another work asking us who the real beasts are, who truly manufactures cruelty and misery. But this is one of the rare few that portrays not the monsters themselves, but their products: the survivors, the wounded, the desperate. And more importantly, it shows us what we are capable of imagining to free ourselves from them. In this magic, Berot gives us not escape, but permission to survive.