Paradais
Fernanda Melchor
![Paradais](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/31f3ff_374463fe9a894bf39c0a0eda52879d68~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_224,h_342,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/Image-empty-state.jpg)
Translated by:
Sophie Hughes
Author is from, and story is set in
Mexico
Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor - an attractive married woman and mother - while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme. Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society - fractured by issues of race, class and violence - and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.