Sophie Hughes, 2019), which has been shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize, attempts to tell a longer, unified story using this collage-like technique. Her newest novel, Hurricane Season (trans.

The Mexican state of Veracruz (Wikimedia Commons)Īs in the story of the UFO, Melchor prioritises the individual perspective as she depicts the realities of her home-state, layering both everyday and astoundingly barbaric experiences framed by this political context. His name has become synonymous with corruption and impunity taken to an almost farcical extreme, and the toxic roots and implications of crime and duartismo are well-documented in the pages of Aqui no es Miami and Hurricane Season. The escalating violence and corruption perhaps became most glaring in 2016 when then-state-governor Javier Duarte fled Mexico after being caught embezzling millions in state money and associating with criminal organizations. Since then, the state and in particular the city of Veracruz have become a battleground for cartels and criminal organizations. The narco planes she saw that summer signal the start of a new era of drug activity in the region.īeginning in the 80s and 90s, the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz saw the steady growth of an illicit drug trade, largely controlled by the Gulf Cartel and its notoriously brutal offshoot, Los Zetas (“The Z’s” in English). It is only later, after overhearing conversations between adults, that she learns the sad truth: the UFO wasn’t carrying aliens, but rather hundreds of kilos of Colombian cocaine. “Jamás en la vida volví a creer en algo con tanta fe como creí en los extraterrestes” She spends the rest of the summer obsessing over UFOs, staking out the night sky, devouring comics about aliens, and studying the documentaries of “UFOlogist” Jaime Maussan. A nine-year-old Melchor sees colourful lights in the night sky while at a beach near the Port of Veracruz, and knows that these belong to a UFO. The International Booker-prize nominated Mexican writer paints a picture of a dark and violent modern-day Veracruz by layering individual experiences in her collection of non-fiction narratives, Aquí no es Miami (2018), and her new novel, Hurricane Season (2019).Īquí no es Miami (2018), Mexican novelist and journalist Fernanda Melchor’s first book of non-fiction, opens with a story from the author’s own childhood.

Temporada de huracanes book