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Dahlia de la Cerda
Reservoir Bitches
Reservoir Bitches
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LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A debut linked story collection of gritty, streetwise, and wickedly funny fiction from Mexico.
ASTON'S REVIEW
Buckle up for this debut from Dahlia de la Cerda because it’s non-stop FAFO energy (F* Around, Find Out, used as a warning about the consequences of one's actions). Reservoir Bitches is an International Booker longlisted collection of thirteen linked stories about Mexican women doing what they need to survive. From streetwise petty theft to the princesses of drug empires, these stories are suffused with high fashion and murderous intent. Each story creates a satirical and blackly comic view of the Mexican underbelly, and each one drops the reader right onto the edge of tragedy. The only way to live is to go forward, so grab on to each narrator for dear life and enjoy the ride.
PUBLISHER REVIEW
Life's a bitch. That's why you gotta rattle her cage, even if she's foaming at the mouth.
In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once social critique and black comedy, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico's most thrilling new writers.
'Reservoir Bitches is a blisteringly urgent collection of interconnected stories about contemporary Mexican women. It absolutely bangs from the first page to the last. It's extremely funny but deadly serious and we loved the energy and flair of the dual translators' approach. It packs an enormous political and linguistic punch but is also subtle, revelatory, and moving about the ways in which these women hustle, innovate, survive or don't, in a world of labyrinthine dangers. This book weaves the riotous testimony of the living and the dead to create an expletive-rich feminist blast of Mexican literature.'
-Judges' comments from the 2025 International Booker Prize
'The stories are all narrated by women, from the daughters of crime bosses to designer-clad socialites, whose voices are all so alive and vibrant that reading this collection was a genuine thrill. Reservoir Bitches doesn't shy from portraying Mexico's gritty underbelly but, much like her fellow countrywoman Fernanda Melchor, De La Cerda's stories scrutinise Mexican society with great humour. It is a remarkably good debut collection.'
-Barry Pierce, The Big Issue
'Women lie, cheat, kill, and die in Mexican writer de la Cerda's searing English-language debut ... de la Cerda offers a refreshingly unapologetic voice for women who refuse to be placated. This is worth a look.'
-Publishers Weekly
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