An unusual newcomer brings a flicker of hope into the eerie darkness of the House of the Sacred Sisterhood – a place of questionable refuge for the 'unworthy' – in Bazterrica's chilling novel that brims with secrets and deep-buried resentments.
In the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, the unworthy live in fear of the Superior Sister's whip. Seething with resentment, they plot against each other and await who will ascend to the level of the Enlightened - and who will suffer the next exemplary punishment.
Risking her life, one of the unworthy keeps a diary in secret. Slowly, memories surface from a time before the world collapsed, before the Sacred Sisterhood became the only refuge.
Then Lucía arrives. She, too, is unworthy - but she is different. And her arrival brings a single spark of hope to a world of darkness.
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 9781805331858
Number of pages: 176
Dimensions: 216 x 135 mm
Brilliant, chilling... The horror is made visceral by Bazterrica's feverish, mythic prose - Laura van den Berg, New York Times
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'
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, author of 'The Cabin at the End of the World'
Bazterrica's world-building is perversely and unsettlingly entrancing - LA Review of Books
A novel that revels in revulsion. It's provocative, intelligent, and deeply affecting... Just make sure to carve out an afternoon to read it - you won't want to look away - Harvard Crimson
Following a narrator with no known name to the reader, threw a series of diary entries, often cut off, with no dates, times or indications of such things, you begin The Unworthy. A cold, cutting and hard going start... More
After reading The Unworthy I am now firmly a fan of Bazterrica. This book is very much up my street anyway, the dying world, the new way of life/survival, it is all things I love to read. The cherry on top was the... More
I'm reeling. I so love when writers play with form, and this really worked for me. The strikethroughs, the passages that ended mid-word, the evolution of the language, the things unspoken but nevertheless felt;... More
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