Her new world order isn’t so much woven into story as it is planted in front of us like a gravestone. Of course, Bazterrica isn’t writing a pamphlet. If Bazterrica had stopped here, she’d still have crafted one of the most potent indictments since Blood of the Beasts, Georges Franju’s palate-killing 1949 documentary about Paris slaughterhouses. There really is no debate here our process of mechanizing meat production is morally appalling. It’s surprising, though it shouldn’t be, how easy it is to critique our real-life factory-farm processes by mentally swapping a human for a pig or cow. Because of its banal and miserable tone, given a muscular translation by Sarah Moses, Tender Is the Flesh - which won Argentina’s Premio Clarin de Novela - is, at least in spates, more powerful than either forebear. The setup sounds like the Charlton Heston teeth-gnasher Soylent Green mated to Anthony Burgess’s satirical novel The Wanting Seed, yet the prose feels like neither. Bazterrica’s interest is less in near-future world-building than in reflecting our grisly present.
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