Synopses & Reviews
A techno-horror portrait of the fears and desires of six young artists whose lives are upended by a controversial video game, from National Book Award finalist Mónica Ojeda.
Six roommates find themselves at the center of an investigation into Nefando, the cult video game that rocked the deep web before being censored for its controversial content. In the parallel reality of the game, players found relief from the pain of past trauma and present shame, but also a frighteningly elastic sense of self and ethics. After the game's deletion, the experiences of its players are debated in hidden internet forums, but its users cannot seem to come to an agreement: Was it a horror game for enthusiasts, a challenge to players' morals, or a poetic exercise? Who made the game, and why? Little is known about Nefando, but Nefando seems to know everything about those whose lives it touches.
Powerful, addictive, and perverse, Nefando takes us to the darkest corners of the web, revealing the inevitable entanglement of digital and physical worlds, and of technology and horror.
About the Author
Mónica Ojeda (Ecuador, 1988) is the author of the novels La desfiguración Silva (Premio Alba Narrativa, 2014), Nefando (Candaya, 2016), and Mandíbula (Candaya, 2018), as well as the poetry collections El ciclo de las piedras (Rastro de la Iguana, 2015) and Historia de la leche (Candaya, 2020). Her stories have been published in the anthology Emergencias: Doce cuentos iberoamericanos (Candaya, 2014) and the collections Caninos (Editorial Turbina, 2017) and Las voladoras (Páginas de Espuma, 2020). In 2017, she was included on the Bógota39 list of the best thirty-nine Latin American writers under forty, and in 2019, she received the Prince Claus Next Generation Award in honor of her outstanding literary achievements.
Sarah Booker is an educator and literary translator. Her translations include Mónica Ojeda's Jawbone, Gabriela Ponce's Blood Red, and Cristina Rivera Garza's New and Selected Stories, Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country, and The Iliac Crest. She has a PhD in Hispanic Literature from UNC-Chapel Hill and is currently based in Morganton, North Carolina where she teaches Spanish at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.