We are green and trembling

Famed Argentinian writer Cabezón Cámara's third novel published in English, fluidly translated by Myers, is a polyphonic interpretation of the incomparable adventures of an enigmatic, seventeenth-century conquistador-esque figure whose chosen moniker was Antonio de Erauso. Born Catalina de Erauso in Spain, he escaped as a teen from the convent, took various masculine names while working as "a cabin boy, shopkeeper, and soldier," among numerous other incarnations, and spent most of his adulthood in the New World. Here, Antonio has unintentionally gathered a "tribe"--two rescued young Indigenous girls, two monkeys, a dog, a horse, and her colt--and is on the run from the captain he's betrayed. While struggling to stay alive, he writes his "beloved aunt" an autobiographical letter detailing his exploits. Conversations with his young charges about God, Christ, Satan, angels, sin, and hell interrupt his epistolary "tall tales." Intertwined through Antonio's explications are glimpses of a dying bishop and the left-behind captain. Cabezón Cámara's acknowledgments include nods to the Guaraní people's Ayvu Rapyta origin stories, Catalina de Erauso's (alleged) autobiography, and even Hayao Miyazaki. From these seemingly disparate inspirations, Cabezón Cámara creates a seamless, fever-dreamy exposé of inhumane colonialism, religiosity, and genocide while revealing the extreme resilience necessary to claim selfhood outside expected, mandated norms.

The beautiful latest from Slum Virgin author Cabezón Cámara is based on the real yet extraordinary life of Antonio de Erauso (1592--1650), who was raised as a girl in a Basque convent before escaping out of a desire to see the world. After Antonio sails to South America as a cabin boy, he becomes secretary to a repellent Conquistador captain. He then discovers two Guaraní girls held captive by the captain's friend, a prelate with a "piranha-smile," and frees them. From the jungle where Antonio has taken the girls, he writes letters to his aunt, a prioress back in Donostia, in which he alluringly recounts his adventures. The author alternates Antonio's missives with sensuous and searing bird's-eye depictions--literally, from a buzzard's perspective--of the jungle and the wanton devastation taking place there. At one point, a pyre of Indigenous people's corpses is described as a "pink waxy lagoon of white skeletons." Antonio, in turn, seeks redemption amid the carnage, and eventually finds it in the beauty of the natural world, which offers meaning to him and the girls he's saved. Readers will be riveted by this queer anticolonial picaresque. Agent: Sandra Pareja, Massie & McQuilkin. (June)