Dengue Boy

Argentine writer Nieva sets his ingenious and outré English-language debut, expanded from an O. Henry Prize–winning short story, in a far-future world radically altered by climate change. It’s 2272 and the Caribbean Sea extends into South America’s Pampas, Buenos Aires has sunk into the ocean, and the Antarctic has thawed into a humid new Patagonia. The global economy is tied up in “virofinance,” from which investors have grown rich by speculating on pandemics. Dengue Boy, a child-mosquito hybrid spawned from a vaccine experiment gone wrong, battles bullies at school, renames herself Dengue Girl, and goes on a quest to discover the truth of her parentage. Her journey takes her from the La Pampa Stock Exchange to the terraformed Antarctic Caribbean as she vows to see mosquitos “reign over this world!” Other narrative threads involve sinister time-traveler Noah Nuclopio, whose rise to power is linked to the popular video game Christian vs. Indians, in which players participate in colonial genocide, as well as telepathic stones, which might be humanity’s only hope of surviving the coming insect revolution. It all culminates in a showdown between Dengue Girl—now evolving into the prophesied Mighty Anarch—and Noah, who holds both the secret of Dengue Girl’s creation and a Borgesian power to fuse past and present into a so-called “eternal origin of the world.” Delightfully gonzo and hilariously surreal, this novel turns nightmarish visions into vital art. It’s a sui generis showstopper. (Feb.)