The body of the Witch is found in an irrigation canal outside a Mexican village called La Matosa, and the novel works outward from there through five people connected to the killing — a teenage girl, a boy, a mother, a man on the run. Each section is one enormous unbroken paragraph, rumor and voice and violence running together at full speed, and the language is filthy in a way the translator Sophie Hughes had to reinvent in English. It’s about poverty, machismo, and the oil towns of Veracruz, and it is one of the hardest and best novels of the last decade.
Hurricane Season