Dengue boy

A story about a tropical and Latin cyberpunk future, with Dengue Boy: The Childhood of the World, Michel Nieva reveals himself to be one of the most interesting voices in contemporary Latin American literature.

In the year 2272, the climate crisis reaches an insurmountable point. The polar regions have completely melted, the average global temperature is 90°C, and cities like New York and Buenos Aires are underwater. At the southern tip of the continent, the Patagonian Archipelagos form the Pampean Caribbean: on one side, a resort town with beautiful artificial beaches; on the other, a miserable, tepid coastline. It is in this devastated landscape that dengue fever thrives.

Nobody likes Dengue Boy. At school, his bizarre and disgusting appearance makes him the prime target of the little tyrant Dulce's mockery. At home, his situation isn't much better. His mother, exhausted from her two jobs, can't stand the mess made by her handless son. And so, displaced, the strange humanoid mosquito lives his life, day after day, in the unbearable heat of the only remaining habitable corner of Earth.

This is a book about the end of the world. A frenetic, tropical, Latin American cyberpunk prose. A delirium of dying, artificial, and virtual realities, in which adults negotiate the value of pandemics on the stock market and deplete the earth's last resources. And, meanwhile, children determine the course of what remains like video games.

Michel Nieva, one of the most interesting and unique voices in contemporary Argentine literature, is a punk science fiction author from Rio Grande do Sul. Immersed in influences from manga, body horror, and the absurd, the author humorously weaves scenes from 21st-century life. He transports us to a brand-new 23rd century, where his star shines alongside names like Franz Kafka, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jorge Luis Borges, David Cronenberg, and Junji Ito.

This Dengue boy: the childhood of the world , his first book published in Brazil, translated by Joca Reiners Terron, a Jabuti finalist, and with a cover by Amanda Miranda, a CCXP Awards finalist, is a bizarre, but believable, portrait of our present.

"Michel Nieva takes a big gamble with this steampunk book that imagines the end of southern Latin America with gaucho literature, monstrous video games, and monetized plagues. Intelligent, funny, and brutal." – Mariana Enríquez, author of The Things We Lost in the Fire .

“A forceful and entertaining critique of the irrationalities of the capitalist system and an invitation to build a future different from the predetermined one.” – La Izquierda Diario