Dengue Boy

A Novel

By: Michel Nieva, Rahul Bery - translator

Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann

A cyberpunk fever-dream of climate catastrophe: the full-length fiction debut from one of the boldest new voices in Argentinian literature, thrillingly translated by Rahul Bery.

After the last Antarctic icecaps melt, calamity follows. Landscapes are radically transformed, diseases mutate and spread with unprecedented speed, and, in response, forms the ghastly “virofinance” exchange—a market for corporations to profit from pandemics and global suffering.

It’s in this grim near-future of 2272, where words such as “winter” and “cold” have no meaning, the Dengue Child grows.

The monstrous humanoid mosquito emerges in newly tropical Argentina, carrying its namesake virus and despairing of its own existence. Bullies brutalize the child until a violent eruption of revelation and transformation takes place, shockwaves of which will extend far beyond the schoolyard into a society full of terrors and wonders enabled and exposed by climate collapse.

Powerful telepathic stones from the bowels of the earth, sought after by smugglers, seem to hold a volatile, primordial wisdom. The meager remaining glaciers are harvested for skating rinks on luxury cruises. And the youth obsess over an immersive, addictive video game that presents a virtual world far more attractive than reality.

In the tradition of Kafka, Cronenberg, and Philip K. Dick, Michel Nieva's brilliant, hilarious, and demented Dengue Boy draws on manga, body horror, and gaucho-punk science fiction to tell a delirious, frenetic, singular story about the ravages of capitalism and what hope might exist, if any, for revenge and rebirth.

Critic reviews

"Delightfully gonzo and hilariously surreal, this novel turns nightmarish visions into vital art. It’s a sui generis showstopper."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A dystopian fever dream that’s equal parts poetic and profane, beautiful and splattered with gore.”
—John Keogh, Booklist (starred review)

"Nieva’s English-language debut boils both into a hallucinogenic cocktail about the end of one world and the beginnings of another . . . [Dengue Boy is] a hyperkinetic, audacious grotesquerie about metamorphosis and the inevitability of change."
—Kirkus Reviews

“Do not lick this book! Dengue Boy is a psychedelic literary funhouse like no other, its richly imagined narrative mutating and reconfiguring chapter by chapter like the Dengue Boy himself. Michel Nieva's vision of our beleaguered world two centuries into the future is at once hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, with no mercy shown for any of its survivors. Be warned though: the psychotropic effects of Dengue Boy have not been studied, but their hallucinogenic impact will linger long after you turn the final page.”
—David Demchuk, author of RED X and The Bone Mother

"An incredibly exciting new voice in speculative fiction . . . Dengue Boy is a striking reminder of the power of genre fiction to speak truth to power and to vividly reveal the uncomfortable inequalities our society is built on. It mixes plausible biological and technological speculation with cutting satire and imaginatively surreal imagery. Nieva has created a modern masterpiece, and established himself as a key new voice in speculative fiction."
—Jonathan Thornton, The Fantasy Hive

“Michel Nieva has placed a strong bet with this steampunk novel that imagines the disappearance of the south of Latin America between gaucho literature, violent videogames and monetized diseases. Intelligent, entertaining and brutal.”
—Mariana Enriquez, author of A Sunny Place for Shady People

"Michel Nieva has taken hold of traditional Argentinian literature and invented a mutated trance, a Ranquel metaverse, a gaucho dystopia."
—Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, author of La Virgen Cabeza

“An incandescent imagination that illuminates the strangeness of everything around us with just the right amounts of unease and tenderness.”
—Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive