Paradais

Translated by Sophie Hughes

Author of the acclaimed novel Hurricane Season, Fernanda Melchor leads us into a different kind of hell — paradise

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasises about seducing his neighbour — an attractive married woman and mother — while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener in the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Facing the impossibility of getting what they think they deserve, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme.

Melchor is a thrilling writer, her electric prose charged with the power to transform the reader. Paradais explores the explosive nature of Mexico's brittle society, fractured by issues of race, class and violence — and confronts us with teenagers whose desires and hardships can tear life apart.

ISBN: 9781922458407 | Published: 1 March 2022 | Trade paperback | 144 pages