Winner English PEN Award
After years away, Lucas returns uninvited to the home he was expelled from as a child. The garden has been conquered by weeds, which blanket his mother’s beloved flowerbeds and his father’s grave alike. A lot has changed since Eloy and Felisberto were invited into the family home to work for Lucas’s father, long ago. The two hulking strangers have brought the land and everyone on it under their control—and removed nuisances like Lucas. Now everything rots. Lucas, a hardened young man, turns to a world that thrives in dirt and darkness: the world of insects. In raw, lyrical prose, García Freire portrays a world brought low by human greed, while hinting at glimmers of hope in the unlikeliest places.
“One of the debut novels that most stood out this year in Latin America.” —NY Times
”Who would have thought that a novel so overflowing with animals, insects, flowers, and shrubs could teach us so much about ourselves?”—Latin American Literature Today
”This World Does Not Belong to Us leads the reader into the deepest, darkest regions of human existence, where what is most infected and rotten becomes beautiful and liberating.” —Toda Literatura
“A deliciously menacing read which I just couldn't put down. Every word punches hard.” —Jan Carson
”I am moved by its tenderness, the shadow of its flight, the kingdom it comes from. Insect and poverty. Larva and death.” —Dara Scully