A savage, violent howl of a book by one of Mexico’s most exciting writers, Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season explores the deep misogyny and femicide of her country. The murder of the town “witch” is the book’s tragic centre, around which swirls streams of brutal, mesmerising, illuminating prose, each chapter told from the perspective of a different but always unreliable narrator. Shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, Hurricane Season is both a dark celebration of language and a powerful insight into a world of poverty, brutality and gore.

Chaired by Clare Wright