Brother…
I’m not sure where to even start with this one. I went in expecting dystopian horror, something unsettling but distant—like how we read about apocalypses that we assume won’t happen in our lifetime. Instead, Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica took one of the most disturbing premises and used it for a perfect, and I mean perfect, reflection of what we’ve become. I mean… PERFECT.
In the near future, a virus infects all animals on the globe (or so the government claims). This makes all meat on the planet toxic and inedible. The solution? Glad you asked. Farm and grow humans to become a new kind of meat—a “special” meat. We got euphemisms on euphemisms, bureaucracy to make it all feel normal, and a main character, Marcos, middle management at a state slaughterhouse in Argentina, who is all but dead inside.
This was a stark read. Bazterrica uses such lean, blunt prose that the book never has to elaborate or flourish. The inhumanity of the world and the slow, imperceptible transformation of people losing themselves—seeing others as things to dominate, control, or consume…it hits.
In a way, the society presented in the novel is just a page turn away from us. The lies of the government, the use of debt and class to subjugate, capitalism normalizing something abhorrent just for profit. The act of cannibalism in this novel is almost a more honest and transparent system than the one we live in, to be frank.
This is dystopia at its sharpest. It’s not fun. It’s not comforting. It doesn’t care about making you feel good. But it is brilliant in its execution.
Would I recommend it? Depends. If you’re okay with staring into the abyss and letting it stare back, then absolutely.
What book did you read that had you staring at the wall after turning the last page?