Mexican novelist Fernanda Melchor makes her unforgettable English-language debut with Hurricane Season, the snarled story of a witch murdered in the village of La Matosa. The accomplished Sophie Hughes translates from the Spanish, beautifully preserving Melchor's nearly uninterrupted prose, which conjures an intense gravity that can be difficult to escape. Prejudicial personal accounts, from those at the storm's center, blur into hearsay, into folklore and mythology, and back again, so that by its end this sensational novel resembles a profane gospel of human greed and betrayal. In La Matosa's economy of violence, Melchor makes awfully clear the ways women bear the most unforgiving burdens of exploitation. Yet Hurricane Season weathers it all into an exquisite work of art, a feat that has not gone unnoticed in world literature. Since its publication, Melchor's novel has been longlisted for the National Book Award in the U.S., shortlisted for the Booker International Prize in the U.K. and named winner of the Internationaler Literaturpreis in Germany. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness