Evolution, ethnography, epidemics – it is the soup from which Dengue boyA brilliant strange new novel by Argentine writer Michel Nieva, emerges. The eponymous dengue boy is a mosquito -human hybrid that can be an experiment, a genetic mutant or the result of a terrible corporate crime. He is perhaps all three at the same time. In any case, it doesn’t matter much for the monstrous creature we find in 2272 in the remains of Argentina after the melting of the Antarctic ice pass, most of the world underwater or unconsciously warmed.

Hot enough to fry a turkey in 20 minutes, passing for room temperature in California. The ‘Argentine Caribbean’, meanwhile, remains a relatively filthy average of 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius). So it is a small surprise that developers were forming the Antarctic Caribbean, and the entire biome engineer to create small discs earth, uh, earth. For a flat fee, customer packages of five, 10 or 20 species can choose to populate their biome mass. Who cares for one Amazon rainforest if you can make 30?

Mankind is more or less hanging, like an error at the bottom of a rock. On the other side of the rock are the privileged children of the viro economy (more on this later). These kids put themselves into virtual headset and immerse themselves in conquest fantasies like the game Christians v Indians 2. One character fantasizes about getting sheep: almost centered carnivores with endless openings to explore. Some have whole cabinets full of things.

I mention that the sheep are not prince but because they have something about the strangeness of Dengue boy. It’s all very fleshy. Heads split, tentacles that retire and domestically – the book is a riot of physical sensations. One can call the book ‘Climate Fiction’ in that it clearly occurs in a world in the death spiral of climate catastrophe, but it would breathe the novel’s intoxicated strangeness, which over the economy, sexuality, biology and temporality.

Any novel in which the protagonist finds themselves in an insect body makes the inevitable comparison with The metamorphosis. Described the book’s interior Dengue boy as an ‘extraordinary, kafkaesque -portrait of a dementia future.’ But in Kafka’s short story, Gregor Samsa wakes up to turn himself into a monstrous bug; His tremendous pain comes from his knowledge of what he once was and the life he wants to crawl back.

Dengue Boy was always Dengue Boy. He has no transformation with which he comes into being. It is the outside world that must get to know him. “Where his mother would like to see Pudgy arms, his wings sprouted, their nerve ends like the varicose of a disgusting old man, and where his mother would like to hear crackled and beautiful cheering, there was only a constant , Maddening buzz that would drive even the calmest soul to despair. “

In The metamorphosisGregor Samsa’s transformation is a one -way street. But Dengue Boy goes through a whirlwind of changes, such as evolution that works fast forward, until it is not clear exactly where time or fact or fiction begins or ends.

In Dengue boy The billionaire class is not technical brittle, but speculators about the so-called viro economy, who bet on what disease is about to take off and then make a kill-storing souva-healing. Along with the developers who build resorts on the ground that withdraws through refrigerators, they are the only real winners in the disaster economy. It takes a certain kind of person to view a landscape that is brought about by destruction and to see an opportunity for luxury Condos.

What all sounds a little depressing, except for the visceral, surreal prose of Nieva – translated by Rahul Berny from Spanish – is anything but. It is a book that takes the horrible strangeness of the world and it explodes in something that is awful and impossible to look away. It reminded me of the final scene of the film Pearlin which Mia Goth faces the camera with a Rictus grip that drags on and on, until she sobs, and slowly but surely unraveling in a grimming of deep despair while the end credits plays.

Dengue boy Play this trick inversely. It is a Grimas that becomes a smile. It is a camera that walks around so many times that you are not sure whether it is the director or the actor you are looking at, and in any case do you feel calm or do you just want excitement?

This is strangeness cut, spun into a salad spinner and served with an indescribable junk above. It is delicious, if you can stomach it.