Tender Is the Flesh

Agustina Bazterrica

In a near-future Argentina, a mysterious virus has made animal meat deadly to eat, leading governments to legalize the farming and slaughter of humans as 'special meat.' Marcos, a hardened processing-plant employee grieving the death of his infant son and the collapse of his marriage, is given a live human specimen as a gift and begins an uneasy, morally fraught relationship with her. The novel is a bleak, visceral dystopian allegory about dehumanization, complicity, and the language people use to excuse atrocity, building to a devastating final revelation about its protagonist.