Hurricane Season
In a Veracruz village called La Matosa, a group of children find the body of a local woman, known only as the Witch, floating in an irrigation canal. The book spirals backward through the lives of the men and women who killed her, the cousin who loved her, the priest who feared her, and the village itself, which has rotted from the inside out. Fernanda Melchor writes in long, unbroken paragraphs of cascading voice, translated into English by Sophie Hughes, that read as a single propulsive sentence about poverty, misogyny, and the violence a society inflicts on the women it pretends not to see.
Where Hurricane Season keeps showing up
Four of our editors' lists feature this novel.