Tender Is the Flesh
 First edition (Spanish) | |
| Author | Agustina Bazterrica |
|---|---|
| Original title | Cadáver exquisito |
| Translator | Sarah Moses |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Literary fiction, Horror fiction, Dystopian fiction, Science fiction |
| Published | November 29, 2017 |
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Publication place | Argentina |
| ISBN | 9781982150921 |
Tender Is the Flesh (Spanish: Cadáver exquisito) is a dystopian novel by Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica. The novel was originally published in Spanish in 2017 and translated by Sarah Moses into English in 2020. Tender Is the Flesh portrays a society in which a virus has contaminated all animal meat. Because of the lack of animal flesh, cannibalism becomes legal. Marcos, a human meat supplier, is conflicted by this new society, and tortured by his own personal losses.
Plot summary
[edit]The world has fallen into chaos after the "Transition", an event where a virus that infected animals was found to be deadly to humans. Animals have been slaughtered and burned en masse, forcing the world's population either to go vegan or eat each other. Soon, cannibalism was institutionalized, industrialized, and normalized. Humans bred for consumption are referred to as "head," their meat marketed as "special meat". Scavengers, who cannot afford the special meat, consume any dead body available.
Marcos is a vegan who, despite his moral objections, has taken up work at a slaughterhouse to support his dementia-ridden father. He is estranged from his wife, Cecilia, following the death of their infant son, and is having an affair with a local butcher. Marcos' sister, Marisa, contributes nothing to the care of their father. Marcos' job involves being a middle man, who purchases the head and then sells the products.
One day, a client delivers Marcos a breeding female as a gift. Not wanting to slaughter her, he keeps her in his house, eventually beginning a sexual relationship with her (although copulating with head is regarded as one of the worst possible transgressions in society) and naming her Jasmine due to her smell reminding him of wild jasmine flowers. Jasmine eventually becomes pregnant as a result of their affair.
When Marcos' father dies, Marcos scatters his ashes in the now-abandoned zoo his father brought him to as a child. He then attends a "farewell party" Marisa is hosting for their father, but leaves after being served an arm from a domestic head that Marisa is keeping alive.
Marcos comes home to find Jasmine in labor. He calls Cecilia, a nurse, to come and help deliver the baby. Jasmine gives birth to a boy, which Marcos claims as his and Cecilia's, revealing his true intentions to breed with Jasmine to produce a child to replace his deceased son and dispose of her once he achieved this goal. His sexual encounters with Jasmine are also implied to be rape, as she has the mental capacity of a child and cannot understand or consent to intercourse. Marcos knocks Jasmine out and begins bringing her to the barn to slaughter her. Cecilia protests, stating that Jasmine could give them more children. Marcos closes by saying "She had the human look of a domesticated animal.”
Main characters
[edit]- Marcos: Right-hand man to the owner of the most reputable meat processing plant; he is in charge of daily operations and the supply and distribution of human meat (also called "special meat").[1]
- Jasmine: a human bred for consumption and given to Marcos. She is the mother of Marcos' second son.[2]
- Don Armando: Marcos' father. He suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home.
- Cecilia: Marcos' estranged wife. She and Marcos communicate mostly over the phone.
- Marisa: Marcos' sister. Obsessed with status and climbing social ladders, Marisa uses her dead father's wake to show off her human meat accessories.[3]
Critical reception
[edit]Tender Is the Flesh was a winner of Argentina's Premio Clarin de Novela prize[4] and was praised by several critics.
The New York Times Book Review's Daniel Kraus described the novel as "powerful" in displaying the monstrosities and desires of the hierarchical structure of capitalism.[2] Kraus also identified that replacing pigs with humans completely alters the view within the novel of industrialized farming.[2] Justine Jordan of The Guardian saw the landscape of the novel as similar to Argentine author Samanta Schweblin's novel Fever Dream.[4] Jordan described Tender Is the Flesh as "vampiric", "provocative" and "sorrowful".[4] Headstuff's David Tierney highlighted the use of dark humor as complementing the novel's darkness and horror.[5] Tierney also identified the main weakness of the novel as Bazterrica babying the reader, with the book improving considerably when this restraint is relaxed.[5]
Scholars such as Megan Todd analyze various ways in which the novel serves as an allegory. Todd in particular described Bazterrica's novel as a metaphor for the politics of exploitation in neoliberal capitalism.[6] Sebastian Williams argues that the novel challenges a traditional humanist conceptualization of Self (as an autonomous, discrete subject), especially regarding the permeable boundaries between the individual and their environment (i.e., what humans consume; the diseases humans contract). Williams also notes that Bazterrica foregrounds broader cultural anxieties about zoonotic diseases; disease is never simply a material fact, but is embedded in cultural narratives that define politics, ethics, and so forth.[1]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Williams, Sebastian (2021-02-23). "Self-Consumption: Cannibalism and Viral Outbreak in Agustina Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh". Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. 30 (isab007): 302–320. doi:10.1093/isle/isab007. ISSN 1076-0962.
- ^ a b c Kraus, Daniel (2020-08-04). "What if the Meat We Ate Was Human?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-03-30.
- ^ Ascanio, María (22 March 2020). "Bodies becoming pain: unusual strategies of dissent in some transnational latin-american women writers" (PDF). Brumal: Revista de investigación sobre lo Fantástico. 8: 113. doi:10.5565/rev/brumal.675.
- ^ a b c "Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica review – a prizewinning Argentinian dystopia". the Guardian. 2020-02-21. Retrieved 2021-03-25.
- ^ a b "What's Wrong with Eating People? Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica". HeadStuff. 2020-04-29. Retrieved 2021-03-30.
- ^ Todd, Megan (2020-07-21). "Thinking Veganism in Literature and Culture: Towards a Vegan Theory". Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change. 5 (1): 07. doi:10.20897/jcasc/8410. ISSN 2589-1316.