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Agustina Bazterrica
Agustina Bazterrica is the author of the striking novel Cadáver exquisito. Her work often explores dark and thought-provoking themes, making her a compelling voice in contemporary literature.
Tender Is the Flesh
Synopsis
After a virus makes all animal meat lethal to humans, the world faces a choice: go without, or find another source. Under pressure from an industry unwilling to die, governments legalize what everyone calls "the Transition" — the breeding, slaughter, and sale of human beings for food. The victims are stripped of language and legal personhood, referred to only as "heads," their flesh marketed as "special meat."
Marcos Tejo works at a processing plant, moving product and managing suppliers with a numbness that lets him survive a job he cannot bear to look at directly. Grieving the death of his infant son and estranged from his wife, he holds the horror at arm's length — until a supplier gifts him a live female specimen, and keeping her forces him to confront the humanity the whole system depends on denying.
Agustina Bazterrica's spare, unflinching dystopia is a work of literary horror that uses institutionalized cannibalism as a mirror for industrial farming, capitalism, and the everyday machinery of dehumanization. It builds to an ending readers rarely forget.
Genres
Characters
Marcos TejoProtagonist
A supervisor at a human-meat processing plant, hollowed by grief over his infant son's death and moving through the industry with self-protecting detachment.
Don Armando (Tender Is the Flesh)Supporting
Marcos's father, whose dementia has reduced him to a resident of a nursing home Marcos pays for and visits alone.
Marisa (Tender Is the Flesh)Supporting
Marcos's status-obsessed sister, who leaves their father's care entirely to Marcos and owns a "domestic head" of her own.
Cecilia (Tender Is the Flesh)Supporting
Marcos's estranged wife, a nurse, withdrawn from him since the death of their infant son.
Goodreads Choice Award (2020)Ladies of Horror Fiction Award (2020)Premio Clarín de Novela (2017)Tähtivaeltaja Award (2020)
Frequently asked questions
Is Tender Is the Flesh a horror novel?
It's usually shelved as literary dystopian fiction with strong horror elements — the premise (legalized human meat after animal meat becomes unsafe) is graphic, but the focus is social satire rather than scares.