Dengue Boy: 'Smart, funny and brutal' Mariana Enrquez

(Paperback, Main)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The year is 2272 and the last of the polar icecaps have melted. New York and Buenos Aires were submerged years ago and the Patagonian Archipelagos have been radically transformed into the only habitable lands on Earth. Here, in the unbearable heat of Victorica, Argentina, our child protagonist is a humanoid mosquito. Carrier of the deadly dengue virus, his monstrous appearance not only makes him a target for his cruel classmates - led by the little tyrant El Dulce - but also elicits disgust from his own mother.As the world spirals to its end, Dengue Boy searches for the meaning of his life and his true origins. Elsewhere, adults negotiate the value of pandemics on the Stock Exchange and waste the last of Earth's resources, while children more privileged than Dengue Boy plug into virtual realities and constant streams of violent video games. In delirious prose that brings together the picaresque, manga, body horror and cyberpunk, Dengue Boy delivers an extraordinary and bizarre portrait of a demented future.

Reviews

'Michel Nieva goes all out with this steampunk book which imagines the end of Latin America amidst gaucho literature, savage video games and monetised plagues. Smart, funny and brutal' - Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night

'An incandescent imagination, illuminating the strangeness of all that surrounds us with a precise balance of tension and tenderness' - Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive

'The book of a genius' - Enrique Vila-Matas, author of Montano's Malady

Author Bio

Michel Nieva is an Argentinian writer based in New York, where he teaches Writing at NYU. A Granta Best Spanish Young Novelist and also a 2022 O'Henry Prize Winner, Nieva has written short stories and collections of essays. Dengue Boy is his first novel.