LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION
«No one refuses the Mother Superior. Not if they want to stay alive, that is.»
The earth is ravaged by environmental catastrophes and wars over access to water.
The weather can lurch from freezing to boiling in a matter of hours, the air is thick with pestilence and the atmosphere gummed up by cobwebby clouds. In this desolate reality, several women have taken refuge in the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, placing themselves at the mercy of a religious cult where they are subjected to torture and forced to make sacrifices in a quest to achieve enlightenment. The house is run with an iron fist by the Mother Superior, above whom there is only ‘Him’. Who is He? No one knows much, it is forbidden to see him and He exercises control from the shadows.
Structured as a series of diary entries in which the protagonist chronicles ceremonies, events, and discoveries at night, these pages are replete with secrets but betray little hope of escape beyond the notion that someone might one day come across them and learn what became of the people described therein.
Agustina Bazterrica, the author of the unforgettable Tender is the Flesh, brings us her new, long-awaited novel set in a disturbing dystopia in which a malevolent false god gleams in the darkness abusing his followers but also surreptitiously building powerful bonds of friendship.
«Disturbing from its first pages. (…) Pushes the reader to the limit to cause him as much vertigo as doubts about himself. (…) Highly recommended»
Ana Bretón, El Mundo
«Brilliant, chilling (…) The horror is made visceral by Bazterrica’s feverish, mythic prose»
The New York Times
«The Argentine writer is back with an astonishing story that establishes her as one of the most relevant voices in horror literature. Passionate, lucid, brilliant…».
Publishers Weekly
«The new novel by Agustina Bazterrica is as breathtaking as her previous work, Cadáver exquisito»
La Razón
«Agustina did it again. With beauty, with talent, with a redemptive cadence, with horror and always but always with good literature».
Valentina Vidal
«This is perhaps one of the most interesting futuristic works of the last year […] Reading Las indignas is almost an obligation».
Cine y Literatura
«Barbaric, brutal and utterly beautiful. The Unworthy is a searing haunt of a novel that I will never forget»
Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb
«Brutal and aching. A perfect fever dream of a book»
Heather Darwent, author of The Things We Do To Our Friends
«This heartrending postapocalyptic tale from Bazterrica (Tender Is the Flesh) examines religious devotion and the search for tenderness in a world torn apart by climate collapse. Moses’s translation is marvelous, capturing the lush lyricism with which Bazterrica describes the most harrowing extremes of human experience. Calling to mind Cormac McCarthy and Chelsea G. Summers, this is as beautiful as it is brutal.»
Publishers Weekly
«Bazterrica’s absorbing feminist literary horror novel stars an unnamed narrator who documents her deplorable situation in an illicit diary as a survivor living in a converted monastery… This satirical horror is incisive and convincing as it skewers religious fervor and blind obedience.»
Booklist (starred)
«Caustically original… an end-of-the-world scenario with a Handmaid’s Tale vibe… A somber reflection on an increasingly hostile world.»
Kirkus
«The Unworthy is unflinching, uncompromising, and unforgettable. Agustina Bazterrica shines a light at the end of the brutal and bleak path we are on so that maybe, just maybe, we can turn around and forge a new one.»
Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts
«In her first novel since her 2020 English language debut, Tender is the Flesh, took the world by storm, the Argentine queen of literary horror brings us into the fold of a violent convent that offers a perverse safety in a dystopian future wracked by climate catastrophe.»
Oprah Daily
PUBLISHED BY: Spanish PRH | Brazil PLANETA | China THE WRITERS PUBLISHING HOUSE | Czech Republic KNIHY DOBROVSKY | France FLAMMARION | Greece PATAKIS | Germany SUHRKAMP | Hungary METROPOLIS MEDIA GROUP | Italy ERIS | Netherlands MERIDIAAN | Poland KOBIECE | Romania TREI | Russia EKSMO | Türkiye SIREN YAYINLARI | United Kingdom PUSHKIN PRESS | Ukraine MORPHEUS | USA SCRIBNER
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