Paradais

Reviews / Votes

'Fernanda Melchor explores violence and inequity in this brutal novel. She does it with dazzling technical prowess, a perfect pitch for orality, and a neurosurgeon's precision for cruelty. Paradais is a short inexorable descent into Hell.'

- Mariana Enriquez, author of Things We Lost in the Fire 'Melchor evokes the stories of Flannery O'Connor, or, more recently, Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings. Impressive.'

- Julian Lucas, New York Times 'With a nimble command of the novel's technical resources and an uncanny grasp of the irrational forces at work in society, [Paradais and Hurricane Season] navigate a reality riven by violence, race, class, and sex. And they establish Melchor, who was born in 1982, as the latest of Faulkner's Latin American inheritors, and among the most formidable.'

- Juan Gabriel Vasquez, New Yorker 'Fernanda Melchor has a powerful voice, and by powerful I mean unsparing, devastating, the voice of someone who writes with rage, and has the skill to pull it off.'

- Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream 'A masterpiece of concision ... Paradais is a labyrinthine monologue on the banal violence of a modern-day teenager.'

- Virginie Despentes, author of Vernon Subutex 'Melchor uses shock to lay bare issues of classism, misogyny, and the ravages of child abuse. Her prose, ably translated by Hughes, is dizzying but effective; it's as if she's holding the reader's head and daring them to look away from the social problems she brings to light. This might be a deeply disconcerting novel, but it's also a brave one. A fever dream that's as hard to read as it is brilliant.'

- Kirkus