DENGUE BOY
by Michel Nieva ; translated by Rahul Bery
A mosquito-borne fever dream that fleshes out the author’s 2022 O. Henry Award–winning short story.
Coming from a literary tradition known for magical realism and societal criticism, Argentine writer Nieva’s English-language debut boils both into a hallucinogenic cocktail about the end of one world and the beginnings of another. Earth is in sorry shape in 2272—the polar ice caps have melted away, leaving much of South America underwater with Antarctica the new Patagonia. Meanwhile, the divide between the poor (everyone) and the ultrawealthy is stretched to garish proportions as investors rake in fortunes betting on the emergence of new viruses and enjoy the apocalypse on luxurious cruise ships. This is the future given to the titular antihero, a human/mosquito hybrid with insectlike features, a disdainful mother, and a burgeoning existential crisis. Banished to a torturous summer camp, young Dengue Boy abruptly becomes Dengue Girl, slaughters a classmate, and sets off on a revenge tour, vowing “Mosquitos, reign over this world!” We also meet René Racedo, the daughter of an influential virofinance broker, who’s obsessed with a violent, genocide-themed videogame that pits “Christians vs. Indians,” and Noah Nuclopio, the time-traveling founder of Ascension Industries and Solutions, whose connections to Dengue Girl are closer than they appear. It’s an otherworldly trip reminiscent of Philip K. Dick’s altered states, complete with telepathic stones and a thriving bootleg trade in both illegal stimulants and “sheepies”—more “sexual organ with autonomy and a life of its own”than electronic sheep. It’s a bit hard to know what to make of the book, whether as an acidic prosecution of colonialism, capitalism, and climate change denial or a hyper-exaggerated back door into identity and body horror. Ultimately, it’s about transformation as an elemental force—of the self, body, or world—delivered as a mighty yelp of defiance from a most unusual prophet.
A hyperkinetic, audacious grotesquerie about metamorphosis and the inevitability of change.