Sarah Tender Popular Books
Sarah Tender Biography & Facts
Tender is the Flesh is a dystopian novel by Argentinean author Agustina Bazterrica. The novel was originally published in Spanish in 2017 and translated by Sarah Moses into English in 2020. Tender is the Flesh portrays a society in which a virus has contaminated all animal meat. Because of the lack of animal flesh, cannibalism becomes legal. Marcos, a human meat supplier, is conflicted by this new society, and tortured by his own personal losses. Plot summary The novel opens by describing the process of slaughtering humans, who are then referred to as "head". The world has fallen into chaos after the "Transition", the term describing an event where a virus that infected animals was found to be deadly to humans, resulting in the mass slaughter and burning of animals, with the world's population forced either to go vegan, or eat each other. Soon cannibalism was institutionalized, industrialized and normalized, with humans bred for consumption known as "special meat". Scavengers, who cannot afford the special meat, consume any dead body available. Marcos works at one of these slaughterhouses in order to support his ailing father, who suffers from dementia. He describes his internal conflict with his job and the state of the world. Marco's job involves being a middle man, the one who purchases the "head" and then sells the products. The owner of a breeding center explains the entire process of raising the "head". He notes things like First Generation Pure (FGP's), describing "head" born in the breeding center. The breeding center delivers Marcos a female FGP as a gift. More of Marcos' personal life is revealed as he talks to his wife Cecilia on the phone. The couple tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to have a family. They had a son, Leo, who died while still a baby. After his son's death he and his wife separated. It is made clear that he is having an affair with a butcher in town. After their encounter, Marcos' sister Marisa and her family are introduced. She contributes nothing to their father's care. Marcos travels back home and in his interactions with the female FGP, he seems to see her as less of a product. He eventually appears to develop feelings for the FGP and begins having sex with her, which is regarded as one of the worst transgressions in society. In part two of the novel, significant time has passed. Marcos has named the female FGP Jasmine, due to her smell reminding Marcos of wild jasmine flowers. She has apparently been living in the house with him and is eight months pregnant. Marcos's elderly father dies, and Marcos scatters his ashes in the zoo his father brought him to as a child, now abandoned. Marisa insists on hosting a "farewell party" for their father, which Marcos reluctantly attends, leaving after discovering his sister's "domestic head." Marcos comes home to find Jasmine in labor with indications that the baby is in trouble. He calls his wife Cecilia, a professional nurse herself, to come and help. Jasmine gives birth to a boy with Cecilia's help. Marcos tells Cecilia that the baby is theirs now. Marcos knocks Jasmine out and begins bringing her to the barn to slaughter her. Cecilia protests, stating that Jasmine could have given them more children. Marcos closes by saying "She had the human look of a domesticated animal.” Main characters Marcos: Right-hand man to the owner of the most reputable meat processing plant; he is in charge of daily operations and the supply and distribution of human meat (also called "special meat"). Jasmine: a human bred for consumption and given to Marcos. She is the mother of Marcos' second son. Don Armando: Marcos' father. He suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home. Cecilia: Marcos' estranged wife. She and Marcos communicate mostly over the phone. Marisa: Marcos' sister. Obsessed with status and climbing social ladders, Marisa uses her dead father's wake to show off her human meat accessories.Critical reception Tender is the Flesh was a winner of Argentina's Premio Clarin de Novela prize and was praised by several critics. The New York Times Book Review's Daniel Kraus described the novel as "powerful" in displaying the monstrosities and desires of the hierarchical structure of capitalism. Kraus also identified that replacing pigs with humans completely alters the view within the novel of industrialized farming. Justine Jordan of The Guardian saw the landscape of the novel as similar to Argentine author Samanta Schweblin's novel Fever Dream. Jordan described Tender Is the Flesh as "vampiric", "provocative" and "sorrowful". Headstuff's David Tierney highlighted the use of dark humor as complimenting the novel's darkness and horror. Tierney also identified the main weakness of the novel as Bazterrica babying the reader, with the book improving considerably when this restraint is relaxed.Scholars such as Megan Todd analyze various ways in which the novel serves as an allegory. Todd in particular described Bazterrica's novel as a metaphor for the politics of exploitation in neoliberal capitalism. Sebastian Williams argues that the novel challenges a traditional humanist conceptualization of Self (as an autonomous, discrete subject), especially regarding the permeable boundaries between the individual and their environment (i.e., what humans consume; the diseases humans contract). Williams also notes that Bazterrica foregrounds broader cultural anxieties about zoonotic diseases; disease is never simply a material fact, but is embedded in cultural narratives that define politics, ethics, and so forth. References. Discover the Sarah Tender popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sarah Tender books.
Best Seller Sarah Tender Books of 2024
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And Still She Laughs
Kate MerrickKate Merrick examines the Bible’s gritty stories of resilient women as well as her own experience losing a childa journey followed by more than a million on prayfordaisy.comto reve...
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A Jeweled Trap
Sarah TenderIra Ganz, and his fostersister and professional wolfhunter partner Milly, have been caught out. They've fluffed the capture of a suspect wolf and been captured themselves.Now, Jud...
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Witch Time
Sarah TenderEdward has taken an unscheduled trip through time quite against his will and better judgement, too! And he has found himself in mediaeval times: alone, friendless, and quite...
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The Harz Journey and Selected Prose
Heinrich Heine & Ritchie RobertsonA poet whose verse inspired music by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Brahms, Heinrich Heine (17971856) was in his lifetime equally admired for his elegant prose. This collectio...
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Waif and Stray
Sarah TenderTommy Tomika, but she's not gonna answer to that meets Doug when she's in seventh grade, and he's a runaway teen, living on the streets. And that's it a conversation, burg...
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Time Changes
Sarah TenderEdward has a superpower: doesn't everyone, these days? It's not a very convenient power, though. Would you like the 'ability' to jump through time, without warning, wit...
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Long Time Coming
Sarah TenderBenjamin and George: two men fast approaching middleage, with broken relationships and marriages behind them, and they've known each other for ten years now. They're friends ...
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Married By Mistake
Sarah TenderWhen Ginette, an awardwinning documentary filmmaker, has to take cameraman Walt along with her to an obscure European principality, it's a drawback. He's hot. He's exce...
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Lost Time
Sarah TenderLost in a castle, hungry and homeless? For Edward, this isn't looking good, even by the standards of his previous experiences of time travel. But he meets someone who m...
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The Language of Silence
Peggy WebbFollowing in the footsteps of her tigertaming grandmother, a woman flees her abusive husband to join the circus in this masterful, heartfelt work of women’s fiction.Peggy Webb won ...
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Close To Power
Sarah TenderTommy is a personal secretary to upandcoming Tory MP Robert Argyllus and more than that, nudge nudge wink wink. Not that he's anything other than the soul of discretion. ...
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The Stallion
Georgina BrownErotica meets bonkbuster in this steamy tale of hunks and horses...The world of showjumping is as steamy as it is competitive. Ambitious young rider Penny Bennett enters into a wag...
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Two Rings
Sarah TenderHarry is an emotionally vulnerable, beautiful, complicated ae, who's taken a long time to work up the courage to propose. So it's important to him, to get the right ring for ...
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Lesbian Monster Hunters In the Wild
Sarah TenderJanna is a college sophomore, who hunts monsters and demons, et cetera, yada yada. For fun, for profit, for... well, who the heck knows. Her family trained her up for i...
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Born To Hunt
Sarah TenderIra Ganz is a college student, who works in the family business. The family business is hunting werewolves. So what? It's a job, right? His foster sist...
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Honey Trap
Sarah TenderIra and Milly are on the hunt, for a beta who's become an alpha. Not that there's any crime in that unless it's accompanied by one human corpse after another...Ira just wish...