A tale of radioactive mutation and bloodlust takes flight in the Argentinian author’s wild anti-capitalist satire

Argentina, 2272. The Argentine Pampas, the grassland prairies that make up much of the country’s interior, have been flooded by a rising sea. The landscape of lakes and glaciers is now an archipelago of tropical islands. Rechristened the Pampas Caribbean, it’s one of the planet’s few remaining inhabitable regions and, as a result, prime tourism real estate.

Dengue Boy attends summer camp on the public beaches of the Victoria Interoceanic Canal, a toxic dumping ground that incubates epidemics and aberrations. One day, the boys form a circle and pull their dicks out in one of those exploratory preteen rituals. Dengue Boy hesitates, because Dengue Boy is a giant, humanoid mosquito, inexplicably born to a human mother in a post-apocalyptic slum. And mosquitoes don’t have dicks. “Is it true your mom was raped by a mosquito?” the kids taunt.