This World Does Not Belong to Us

'A deliciously menacing read which I just couldn't put down. Every word punches hard. This World Does Not Belong to Us treads the fine line between beauty and horror effortlessly.'

-- Jan Carson, author of The Raptures

'One of the debut novels that most stood out this year in Latin America.'

-- New York Times

'The disquieting and visceral story of a banished son’s revenge... García Freire unearths a brilliant sense of the miraculous from the swarming and putrid subject matter. The result is beautifully macabre.'

-- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

'Visceral prose captures Lucas’s obsession with death, bugs, and other unpleasant aspects of life... There is a strange, unconventional beauty to his morbid world.'

-- Foreword Reviews

'Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire shows an astonishingly mature style in her debut novel.'

* El País *

'Who would have thought that a novel so overflowing with animals, insects, flowers, and shrubs could teach us so much about ourselves?'

-- Latin American Literature Today

'Tremendous, a delight.'

-- Mónica Ojeda, author of Mandíbula

'García Freire takes us to the deepest parts of the human condition.'

-- Página Dos

'This World Does Not Belong to Us leads the reader into the deepest, darkest regions of human existence, where what is most infected and rotten becomes beautiful and liberating.'

-- Toda Literatura

'Why do we need to read this book? Because like all good literature, as full of inventions as it may seem, it contains a core of truth about human nature. We need to read this book because we are all parents or children and at some point we have questioned or question what it is to be a father, what it is to be a child.' 

-- Recordo

'Natalia García Freire is unbelievably young to have written a first work of such talent.'

-- Relatos en construcción

'There's an echo of Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo in this novel. The return home, the search for a father or at least the memory of him. The ghosts. Only here, instead of the murmurs, we have a constant buzzing of insects and the noise of animals.'

-- María José Navia, author of Sant

'I am moved by its tenderness, the shadow of its flight, the kingdom it comes from. Insect and poverty. Larva and death.'

-- Dara Scully, author of Animal de Nieve

'A brooding tale of broken relationships, betrayal and – just possibly – redemption... A remarkably assured work. In prose that is both poetic and earthy, Natalia García Freire spins her evocation of the natural world and humanity's place in it with care and precision.'

-- New Internationalist

'Skilful and unnerving... A masterpiece in atmosphere and the power of perspective. García Freire is an author in full control of estimable powers and effectively translated by Victor Meadowcroft, who captures the subtlety at work in the narrative voice, as well as its audacious confidence.'

 

-- Litro Maga