Winner of the Uruguayan National Literature Prize for Fiction, the Bartolomé-Hidalgo Fiction Prize, and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Literature Prize.

A port city is in the grips of an ecological crisis. The river has filled with toxic algae, and a deadly ‘red wind’ blows through its streets; much of the coast has been evacuated as the wealthy migrate inland to safety, leaving the rest to shelter in abandoned houses as blackouts and food shortages abound.

The unnamed narrator is one of those who has stayed. She spends her days trying to disentangle herself from the two relationships that had once meant everything to her, and looking after the young boy who’s been placed in her care. As the world in which they move becomes smaller, she reflects on the collapse of the other emotional ties in her life and the emergence of a radical yet tender solitude.

With striking prose and vivid characters, the multi-award-winning Pink Slime offers profound reflections on motherhood, marriage, and caregiving, set against the backdrop of a crumbling city.

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‘Powerful and beautifully written, this is a disturbing read, depicting a terrifyingly convincing near-future scenario.’

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‘This distressing and emotional science-fiction novel that tells the story of how an inexplicable plague destroys a city … The collapse of the food supply, bodies, feelings, and the system is narrated with a heartbreaking beauty.’

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‘A dystopic work worthy of JG Ballard.’

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‘[T]his ominous novel predicts a universe similar to the one that began with the pandemic, one charged with contradictory uncertainties, and it acts like a potential environment where the author can take her obsessions to the extreme and once again consolidate the oppressive and suffocating form that stands out in all of her work.’

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‘She breaks through parameters, shatters expectations, breaks down internal walls like that invading algae that changes the lives of the residents in the town. Almost like Rulfo in Comala. A poetic and tenacious whirlwind, dreadful and sublime … An extraordinary work!’

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‘Unsettling and unpredictable, Uruguayan writer Fernanda Trías’s new novel describes not merely a dystopia but a full-on Technicolor apocalypse.’

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‘A fascinating, astutely written novel. Pink Slime is both a successful portrait of societal gluttony and a bold exploration of the ambiguities of care.’

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‘Latin American fantastika is in the midst of a remarkable renaissance … The latest of this string of exhilarating new books to find its way into English is Uruguayan novelist Fernanda Trias’s Pink Slime … Ecological collapse generates moments of startling beauty that are hauntingly captured by Heather Cleary’s elegant translation.’

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‘Time in the haunting, elegiac Pink Slime loops in and around itself. Reading it is like constantly being assailed by a sense of déjà vu; passages are repeated, events of the past are re-examined from different angles. The narrator and, by extension, Trías are fixated on ways of measuring time — what marks the beginning, middle and end of the world, of a narrative? … Pink Slime is a potent allegory of climate change. As the narrator tells us at the end: “I cannot stop a future that has already happened”.’

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‘[A]n agonisingly beautiful read.’

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‘In spite of the grim scenario in Pink Slime, there is much beauty in the words of Fernanda Trias’s narrator and in her sensitive, questioning nature … Pink Slime is a remarkable book, and Heather Cleary’s translation does full justice to the poetic prose which conveys the resilience, love and hope of the narrator: something, surely, that we all need in this ever-changing world.’

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‘This is a stunningly dark novel, but a beautiful one; Trías’ prose and Cleary’s translation perfectly capture what it feels like to live in an epidemic … This is a knockout of a story. Stunning writing makes this a startlingly powerful novel.’

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‘Uruguayan author Trías presents a bleak dystopian novel narrated by an unnamed woman living in an unnamed South American city near the coast … Despair, arbitrariness, and resignation shape this unnerving tale about facing environmental destruction.’

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‘A genuinely unsettling example of eco/body horror that’s also a commentary on motherhood … A beautiful elegiac meditation on parenting — in this case, the deep connection between a mother and son.’

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Praise for The Rooftop:

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Praise for The Rooftop:

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Praise for The Rooftop: