Hurricane Season (Temporada de huracanes)

Fernanda Melchor’s formidable portrait of Mexico & its demons, is written with a brutal lyricism that is as affecting as it is enthralling. 

Translated by Sophie Hughes.

Hurricane Season opens with the macabre discovery of a decomposing body on the outskirts of a village in rural Mexico. The body is that of the local witch, feared by the men but relied upon by the women for love charms and illegal abortions. The book soon transcends its whodunnit constraints: the culprits are named early on in the story. The questions shift from who to why, as Melchor paints a portrait of lives governed by poverty & violence, machismo & misogyny, superstition & prejudice.  

Like Roberto Bolano’s 2666 or Faulkner’s greatest novels, Hurricane Season takes place in a world filled with mythology & violence — real violence, the kind that seeps into the soil, poisoning everything around: it’s a world that becomes more terrifying & more terrifyingly real the deeper you explore it. 

'Brutal, relentless, beautiful, fugal, Hurricane Season explores the violent mythologies of one Mexican village & reveals how they touch the global circuitry of capitalist greed. This is an inquiry into the sexual terrorism & terror of broken men. This is a work of both mystery & critique. Most recent fiction seems anaemic by comparison.'  - 2020 International Booker Prize Judges

Fernanda Melchor, born in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1982, is a writer & journalist who lives & works in Puebla. She has written the non-fiction book Aquí no es Miami & the novels Falsa liebre, Temporada de huracanes y Paradais.