Pink Slime

Winner of the Uruguayan National Literature Prize for Fiction, the Bartolome-Hidalgo Fiction Prize, and the Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Literature Prize.

A port city is in the grips of an ecological crisis. The river has filled with toxic algae, and a deadly 'red wind' blows through its streets; much of the coast has been evacuated as the wealthy migrate inland to safety, leaving the rest to shelter in abandoned houses as blackouts and food shortages abound.

The unnamed narrator is one of those who has stayed. She spends her days trying to disentangle herself from the two relationships that had once meant everything to her, and looking after the young boy who's been placed in her care. As the world in which they move becomes smaller, she reflects on the collapse of the other emotional ties in her life and the emergence of a radical yet tender solitude.

With striking prose and vivid characters, the multi-award-winning Pink Slime offers profound reflections on motherhood, marriage, and caregiving, set against the backdrop of a crumbling city.

'This distressing and emotional science-fiction novel that tells the story of how an inexplicable plague destroys a city ... The collapse of the food supply, bodies, feelings, and the system is narrated with a heartbreaking beauty.'
- Jordi Carrión, The New York Times

'This ominous novel predicts a universe similar to the one that began with the pandemic, one charged with contradictory uncertainties, and it acts like a potential environment where the author can take her obsessions to the extreme and once again consolidate the oppressive and suffocating form that stands out in all of her work.'
- Leonor Courtoisie, Latin American Literature Today

'She breaks through parameters, shatters expectations, breaks down internal walls like that invading algae that changes the lives of the residents in the town. Almost like Rulfo in Comala. A poetic and tenacious whirlwind, dreadful and sublime ... An extraordinary work!'
- Aura Lucia Mera, El Pais