SPECIAL EDITION with a new afterword by the author · Over one million copies sold
If everyone was eating human meat, would you?
Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans — only nobody calls them that. He deals in numbers, consignments, processing. One day he is given a specimen of the finest quality. He leaves her tied up in an outhouse, a problem to be dealt with later.
But she stays with him. Her trembling body and watchful gaze seem to understand. Slowly Marcos becomes tortured by what has been lost, and by what might still be saved.
Bazterrica's Argentinian prizewinner takes the logic of the meat industry and moves it one step sideways, and the effect is both unbearable and impossible to stop reading. Mark Haddon called it absolutely disgusting, utterly gripping. The Guardian called it horribly effective.
About the author
Agustina Bazterrica is an Argentinian novelist and short-story writer and a central figure in the Buenos Aires literary scene. Tender is the Flesh won the Premio Clarín Novela and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Her story collection Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird and her novel The Unworthy are also published by Pushkin Press.
Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses.
Edition details
- Pushkin Press special edition paperback, 224 pages
- New afterword by the author
- Published 14 May 2026
Content note: This novel contains graphic depictions of violence, cannibalism, sexual violence and animal and human cruelty. Intended for adult readers.
