A Foreign Country is the Past

by Fernando Sdrigotti

At a secluded weekend home, a girl becomes entranced by the sound of the cicadas, as she grapples with the stifling summer heat, and her mother’s recent death.

Overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding, a young man seeks solace in a privatised cathedral, comically navigating religious bureaucracy, economic crisis, and existential angst.

A journey to scatter his grandparents’ ashes turns into a tragicomedy, as an unnamed man explores the changes in the city he left behind.

A Foreign Country is the Past is the sensorial new collection from the acclaimed author of Jolts. Centering on identity and memory, viewed through a distinctive Argentine lens, these fifteen tales are a profound exploration of the spaces between places and the echoes of time.

Paperback

First published June 5, 2025

About the author

Fernando Sdrigotti was born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1977.

His fiction and critical writing has appeared widely online and in print, and has been translated into French, Italian, Turkish, Norwegian and Spanish.

He is the author of Dysfunctional Males, Shitstorm, and Grey Tropic among other titles.

He lives in London.

Reviews

[ilija · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Foreign Country is the Past is a collection of 15 stories that seem narrated by someone you know, and as you read them, there is a sense that the voice you know could be you. They are written in one voice, but each story works with a different entry point into theatrically staged remembering. Re-membering happens quite literally as the story itself sort of grows from autobiographical anecdotes/vignettes—that may not have necessarily happened to Fernando personally, but you can bet that he had witnessed them. Things large and small… fragments of discomfort that persist and don’t let you forget their setting, and you can’t help why. Writing (the practice) that way works in double-valence, because it permits the writer to move back in time by devising techniques on a per-story basis. This is why each of the stories in Foreign Country comes out unique—but in one voice; wrought from the mucus of memories, but precise. It is similar to reversing a dream logic but it is called writing and you can do it with practice and talent—and, here’s the kicker, only if you’ve lived the thing. I’ve lived surprisingly many of these stories, which on some subcutaneous level makes me question if I am real at all.

Prompt: Pick one of the stories as your favorite. I like all of them. The story with the Owl feels uncannily close to ‘home’ though I’ve never been to the Argentine countryside in the summer, for holidays… The story featuring a labyrinthine ship was my entry into the (logic of the) book so it became the part that I deem familiar. This points to the arc/shape of your place in the book changing as you read through. As you move further into the book, it becomes clear that the book itself was written with the whole thing (collection) in mind, but I don’t want to give this one away as the gesture will delight you and move you.
Fernando shared one of the stories for Christmas last year (2025) called Colour Theory and indeed that one felt the most personal. He gave it a lot of space and the yearning crystallizes like fields of tiny salt crystals between love and loathing for a time that now only exists in various manifestations and mutations, so we are left with its distance to ponder our own place and who we love and what remains. A Foreign Country is the Past

[Ayisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title necessitated I read this book. Through a series of short stories, Sdrigotti tackles the consequential mundanity of life.

Books like this make me uncomfortable because they are so (too) close to reality. They don’t allow me to lose myself, rather make me more reflexive. I pause when I read something like, “But how random, and how out of character, to have words in your head that don’t deal with everyday minutiae, like ‘Do I need to refill the tank?’ or ‘Where is the next service area?’” These sorts of sentences stay with me as my life moves forwards.

I’m also obsessed with the way the windscreen wipers were described in one of his stories. And relished the ways childhood was captured.

[Eliza303 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent stories. Behind each well-drawn character dealing with life is a sense of wider society and its changes. In every story the clear, precise writing sets up pace and tension that leads to a meaningful conclusion.