Paradais

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor - an attractive married woman and mother - while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme. Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society - fractured by issues of race, class and violence - and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.

Born in Veracruz, Mexico, in 1982, Fernanda Melchor is 'one of Mexico's most exciting new voices' (Guardian). Her novel Hurricane Season was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, longlisted for the National Book Award, and as a New York Times Notable Book.