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Bloat: A Petrofiction
Not yet published
Expected 2 Feb 27A dark and consuming novel about oil, power, beauty, and the quiet resistance of women in a dystopia where death is not the ultimate harm
My fellow Venezuelans, we’re going to swim in black gold. Remember this year: 1999. We’re not just reclaiming our spring, our Thames, our Seine. We’re reclaiming our country.
In an alternate Caracas, the oil fields have dried up, and executives have implemented a new system for oil production: collecting corpses and processing them into necrofuel.
In four interlocking sections that unfold in reverse chronology, Bloat follows the lives of women who live under this exploitative regime. Mercedita grieves the death of her father and resents the intrusion of investigators into her home. Merced, a sex worker living with an oil executive, struggles to retain her agency amid an increasingly restricted life. After Mamé goes missing, a watchman tries to find her while he and his nephew participate in the paramilitary that enabled her disappearance. And Mercy battles an illness while working at a restaurant frequented by the powerful.
Raquel Abend’s first book translated into English explores totalitarianism in a country with two major exports: oil and pageant queens. In visceral prose that foregrounds the bleakness of its dystopia, Bloat makes tangible the grief, ecological devastation, and violence faced by women in a city where bodies are primarily a means to an economic end. And yet, these women resist their dehumanization, forging community and owning their desires despite the darkness of their world.
My fellow Venezuelans, we’re going to swim in black gold. Remember this year: 1999. We’re not just reclaiming our spring, our Thames, our Seine. We’re reclaiming our country.
In an alternate Caracas, the oil fields have dried up, and executives have implemented a new system for oil production: collecting corpses and processing them into necrofuel.
In four interlocking sections that unfold in reverse chronology, Bloat follows the lives of women who live under this exploitative regime. Mercedita grieves the death of her father and resents the intrusion of investigators into her home. Merced, a sex worker living with an oil executive, struggles to retain her agency amid an increasingly restricted life. After Mamé goes missing, a watchman tries to find her while he and his nephew participate in the paramilitary that enabled her disappearance. And Mercy battles an illness while working at a restaurant frequented by the powerful.
Raquel Abend’s first book translated into English explores totalitarianism in a country with two major exports: oil and pageant queens. In visceral prose that foregrounds the bleakness of its dystopia, Bloat makes tangible the grief, ecological devastation, and violence faced by women in a city where bodies are primarily a means to an economic end. And yet, these women resist their dehumanization, forging community and owning their desires despite the darkness of their world.
136 pages, Paperback
Expected publication February 2, 2027
About the author
Raquel Abend
16 booksRaquel Abend, born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1989, is the author of Bloat: A Petrofiction, her first novel to be translated into English, publishing from Graywolf Press in 2027. She is also the author of the novels Andor and Cuarto azul; the short story collection La señora Varsovia; and the poetry collections Sobre las fábricas, La beata de las locas, and Una trinitaria encendida. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing in Spanish from New York University. She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing in Spanish and Art History from the University of Houston. She lives in Houston.
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