One Book, Two Reviews: The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses

Alison’s Review

There’s something deliciously appropriate about The Unworthy, by Agustina Bazterrica, and translated by Canadian writer and translator Sarah Moses, being published on March 4, 2025. I have to assume this was planned, because it’s some easy, sly marketing: why not have a gripping book about a strange religious cult, set in some sort of dystopian world, come out on Shrove Tuesday? I was raised as a Catholic, so this is about to be our big season, and I for one love this timing.

An unnamed narrator is in a cell in some sort of convent-like religious order, writing her story secretly in whatever she can get her hands on: ink from the monks (precious and seldom used, if she doesn’t have to use it), berries, charcoal, and regularly, her own blood. The Sacred Sisterhood is a brutal and unforgiving place, with dozens of strict rules for its penitents, and the narrator struggles to follow them. Though she feels safer inside the walls of the order, her fading memory of her life before disturbs her, and she rushes to get any scraps of memory onto her secret papers, with crossed out words and sections where she gets ahead of herself or writes things she doesn’t want to remember.

What impressed me most about this was the immersive, creeping framing that Bazterrica created: this story is built on suppressed dread.

What impressed me most about this was the immersive, creeping framing that Bazterrica created: this story is built on suppressed dread. You know it will end poorly, you know the slow drips of horror are there to keep you tensed for the final downfall, and yet you keep turning the pages, waiting to see the disaster unfold. The narrative as a kind of diary, written secretly on loose pages, is rushed and leaves things out, so you’re approaching each new section of the story with only pieces of the information needed to puzzle out what’s going on in the Sacred Sisterhood. It’s wildly effective as a frame for this dystopian story of an extreme religious cult.

This is one of my favourite reads of 2025 so far.

This is one of my favourite reads of 2025 so far. It’s so well-done, it’s so strange and unsettling, graphic with purpose for the story, and shows glimpses of a more complex world beyond the binds of the page. My favourite novels are ones that let me move outside of the original story, and Bazterrica has done that here. The Unworthy is ready to be your next unsettling read.

Clementine’s Review

One of the most exciting realities of the contemporary publishing landscape is the proliferation of literature translated into English. From a CanLit perspective, that means more Québécois and Francophone Canadian literature making it into the hands of Anglophone readers, as well as Canadian presses like Book*hug and Biblioasis publishing translated literature from abroad. I myself tend to find translated literary fiction more interesting, in general, than the buzzy literary fiction permeating the Anglosphere, so I welcome the rise of translated literature warmly, which seems to reflect in my choice of books to review for TMR!

One translated novel that has made an enormous splash is the Argentine author Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh, her first work to be translated into English. Unlike a lot of translated fiction, Bazterrica’s novel blew up on social media, particularly BookTok, with her unflinching horror novel about a world in which cannibalism is the law of the land selling over half a million copies in English.

The Unworthy, first published in Spanish in 2023, is Bazterrica’s much-anticipated follow-up after the runaway success of Tender is the Flesh, and it sees her reunited with veteran Canadian translator Sarah Moses. I will refrain from doing too much comparison with Tender is the Flesh, since The Unworthy is a completely different novel — although, given the buzz Bazterrica’s previous work has undoubtedly generated for her newest novel, sparing comparison is warranted.

In The Unworthy, our unnamed narrator writes about life in a mysterious and violently punitive religious order, apparently the only shelter from a world ravaged by climate change and environmental toxins. She is one of the unworthy, near the bottom of the order’s hierarchy; the Chosen and the Enlightened, mutilated women close to God, keep the women safe from the outside world through song, prayer, and secretive rituals. The narrator manages to suppress her defiant streak, her only true rebellion her writing – which, if discovered, could cost her her life. But the arrival of a new unworthy, rumoured to have special powers, threatens to disrupt the narrator’s ability to suppress her past – and raises questions about the purpose of the Enlightened and the world outside of the convent’s walls.

Bazterrica’s writing, translated in Moses’s capable hands, is atmospheric – it feels claustrophobic and isolated … Because the setting of the convent is so insular, and because our narrator is being kept deliberately ignorant, the low information atmosphere works to reinforce the novel’s themes of isolation and ideological extremism.

This is a speculative novel that is far more about allegory and ideas than worldbuilding: we don’t get many answers about what brought the world to this point, and while we slowly gather more information about the religious order, there is much left unexplored. Readers who crave explanation and thorough worldbuilding will likely be left disappointed and might indeed feel that the sections of the novel that focus on the narrator’s post-apocalyptic life before joining the religious order are underdeveloped and derivative. I am not a reader who always requires robust worldbuilding, and I found myself compulsively reading to learn more about the convent and speculating about the narrator’s fate as the tension begins to creep in. Bazterrica’s writing, translated in Moses’s capable hands, is atmospheric – it feels claustrophobic and isolated, dripping with macabre details of mutilation, rat meat, and cockroaches sewn into pillowcases. Because the setting of the convent is so insular, and because our narrator is being kept deliberately ignorant, the low information atmosphere works to reinforce the novel’s themes of isolation and ideological extremism. The narrator’s recollection of her former life do feel comparatively thin, especially when considering the number of speculative novels that deal with societies existing in the ruins of environmental collapse (Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam series perhaps being one of the most prominent) or that take a philosophical approach to exploring a world beyond the narrator’s comprehension (Jacqueline Harpman’s stunning novella I Who Have Never Known Men being an exemplar).

Tender is the Flesh is a novel dripping with shocking images and twists, and, grotesque as it is, The Unworthy feels relatively understated in comparison. There is certainly continuity in Bazterrica’s writing – her unflinchingly disturbing imagery; her high-concept speculative premises; the feminist social commentary built into her worldbuilding – but The Unworthy is a little more intimate, a little less shocking. While this is a testament to her range as a writer of feminist horror, it is, perhaps, a less impactful novel to a reader anticipating a high level of shock value. Ultimately, it is neither extremely shocking nor extremely philosophical: it lands somewhere in the middle, a novel that had me in turns racing through it for answers and wanting to slam it shut upon encountering a particularly disgusting image, a tantalizing and delicious taste that doesn’t always satisfy. Yet Bazterrica is undeniably an exciting voice who has found an enormous new audience in the Anglosphere, and her vivid prose, social commentary, and disgustingly expansive imagination will no doubt keep me – and many others – coming back for more. She had no easy task following up the success of Tender is the Flesh, and she’s delivered a confident novel that comes unmistakably from the same imagination but that offers something new.

Agustina Bazterrica, born in Buenos Aires in 1974, has a degree in arts from the University of Buenos Aires and works as a cultural manager and jury member in various literary contests. She is the author of the short story collection Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird, and the novels Matar al niñaand Tender Is the Flesh, the latter of which was awarded the Clarín Novel Prize. Tender Is the Flesh established Bazterrica as a bestselling author worldwide, with translations into thirty languages and half a million copies sold in English alone. Tender Is the Flesh is currently being adapted for television. Her latest novel, The Unworthy, was published in Spanish in 2023 and received the same enthusiastic reception as Tender Is the Flesh, affirming Bazterrica’s status as a prominent author in contemporary literature.

Sarah Moses is a Canadian writer and translator from French and Spanish. She has translated work by Latin American authors including Tomás Downey and Ariana Harwicz, whose novel Die, My Love was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, the Premio Valle Inclán, and the Best Translated Book Award. The Unworthy is the third of Agustina Bazterrica’s books she has translated into English. Her collection of short fiction, Strange Water, will be published in the fall of 2024.

Publisher: Scribner (March 4, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 192 pages
ISBN: 9781668051887

Alison Manley

Website

Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.

Clementine Oberst

Clementine Oberst is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in television studies. Born and raised in Toronto, she has lived in Montreal and Glasgow and now calls Hamilton home. When she isn't writing her dissertation, Clementine can be found knitting, trying to cultivate a green thumb, and playing with her cats. She loves nothing more than losing herself in a good book. You can connect with her on Instagram @clementinereads.