Fernanda Melchor 
Paradais [EPUB ebook] 

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor – an attractive married woman and mother – while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme. Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society – fractured by issues of race, class and violence – and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.

About the author

Sophie Hughes has translated novels by several contemporary Latin American and Spanish authors, including José Revueltas, Enrique Vila-Matas, Laia Jufresa and Rodrigo Hasbún. She was shortlisted for the 2019 and 2020 International Booker Prize.