Living Things

Nominated by the Embassy of Spain and Spanish Cultural Center

Living Things is a literary eco-thriller, a punk-like blend of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives and Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream, and heralds an exciting new voice in international fiction. Living Things follows four recent graduates – Munir, G, Ernesto, and Álex – who travel from Madrid to the south of France to work the grape harvest. Except things don’t go as planned: they end up working on an industrial chicken farm and living in a campground, where a general sense of menace takes hold. What follows is a compelling and incisive examination of precarious employment, capitalism, immigration, and the mass production of living things, all interwoven with the protagonist’s thoughts on literature and the nature of storytelling.