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About the Book

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Written by Argentinian author Agustina Bazterrica, Tender is the Flesh is a dystopian horror novel about a future in which animals are said to be dangerous due to a virus. Unwilling to stop eating meat, humanity has turned to eat human beings.

The book jacket describes it like this, "Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved."

 

There is a wonderful review on The Guardian Website

And another great review at The New York Times

The book is currently a nominee in the final round of the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards for Horror

ISBN: 978-1-9821-5092-1

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A basic prerequisite of any human being doing harm to another living being of any sort is the process of othering, essentializing, and deindividualizing.  This chain of mental maneuvers creates the perception of distance necessary to oppress, harm, or kill another being. The same techniques have been used against other humans and animals throughout history, and still are today.  In Tender is the Flesh a zoonotic disease has supposedly rendered all animals inedible and dangerous to humans. Not being willing to give up eating meat, the population turns to human flesh. The story is told through the eyes of Marcos Tejo, who seems leery of the new reality, but goes through some disturbing moral shifts when he is gifted a “female head” of his own.     The focus here is to explore how othering, essentializing, and deindividualizing have manifested in our history, in our present, and what lessons we can take from the fictional future of Tender is the Flesh .
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