(Livestock and beloved pets alike must be eliminated.) What then? Our main character discloses: “In some countries, immigrants began to disappear in large numbers. In Augstina Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh, we find a world that has been ravaged by a virus that renders all animals dangerous and inedible. But behind the taboo, behind the gore, what are we really talking about when we’re talking about cannibalism? This year has been so horrific, so full of twisted headlines, that maybe the only way to illicit any genuine shock out of a reader is to take them to such an extreme. From Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of Beowulfto Shalom Auslander’s Mother for Dinner, this has been the year of books that feature people eating people. Still, the execution will leave a bad taste in the reader's mouth.By my count, 2020 has seen the publication of quite a few books featuring cannibalism. These entrancing scenes normalize the brutality with euphemisms, demonstrating the Orwellian potential of language to "cover up the world." The prose, though, can be overwrought at times notably during a sex scene taking place on a bloody butchering table but Bazterrica's purposely unappetizing conceit makes for a powerful allegory on the human consumption of animals. Bazterrica is best when clinically describing the mechanisms of the harvesting process, from breeding to killing to butchering.
After one of his clients gives him as a gift a "First Generation Pure" female captive-bred, non-GMO human livestock he begins to lust for her, though it's a capital crime to "enjoy" females meant for breeding. Marcos is a dour character, emotionally hollow after the death of his son and working in a profession he despises to support his ailing father.
Marcos Tejo works for a processing plant that slaughters genetically modified humans, or "head," for consumption. Bazterrica efficiently establishes the premise: an animal-borne virus has led to the mass slaughter of all livestock, forcing the hungry populace to look for protein elsewhere ("At a chilling speed the world was put back together and cannibalism was legitimized"). Argentine writer Bazterrica's uneven English-language debut disturbs with a vision of human cruelty and moral flexibility.
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