El año de la serpiente

It all begins with a smell. A deep, unbearable odor of decay: a layered presence that settles in the hallways of a classic 1960s Buenos Aires building. Aldana, a neighbor whose aversion to clutter and bacteria keeps her in a constant state of alert, is the first to notice it and, along with Gina, the building's doorman, decides to confront the mystery emanating from apartment 5C. There lives Celeste Blum, a seemingly solitary young architecture student who, nevertheless, has recently begun a relationship with Simón, an older man obsessed with reptiles, whose devotion disrupts the couple's intimacy in an ecosystem that teeters between fear and fascination. But what begins as an olfactory assault soon transforms into a disquiet: what is happening behind the closed door of this young woman who has always seemed to inhabit a realm of absolute calm? In the apartment's stale atmosphere, amidst models of green spaces and gossip magazines, floats something more than the trace of an absence: a creeping suspicion, an animalistic, exotic, and lethal presence that could, perhaps, permeate even further. In *The Year of the Serpent*, Camila Fabbri constructs a novel of domestic horror and psychological tension about the environmental dangers of human relationships: those invisible threats that fester in emotional bonds, in urban loneliness, and in the voyeurism of neighbors who observe the tragedy of others as if it were a reality TV show.