Feral

A tight-knit group of female friends investigate the murder of one of their own in this formally inventive literary novel from contemporary Mexico. On The Worst Day, Diana gets a call informing her that her best friend, Eugenia, has been murdered while on an archaeological dig at the ruins of Teotihuacán, where she had enmeshed herself in a local resistance movement. In the aftermath, the remaining members of the self-declared Commune—Diana, whose prophetic visions failed to protect her beloved friend; Saratoga, a musician; and Yunuen, a visual artist—wade through their individual and shared grief while piecing together the mystery of Eugenia’s death from the pages of her field journal. A modern retelling of the Greek tragedy of Iphigenia in the context of contemporary Mexico, Feral interweaves narrative timelines to tell a story of female friendship, mourning, and resistance against gendered violence and extractivism. Politically pointed and richly imagined, Gabriela Jauregui’s ambitious and lyrical debut sheds light on the dark realities of the present and imagines the feral, boundless possibility of the future.