This novel unravels a tale of vengeance and vigilante justice at the hands of an unlikely heroine, a fourteen year-old girl named Lum Hué, daughter of a white man and a Mapuche mother, and sole survivor of the massacre of her village by five white soldiers. With a minimalist prose that has become the trademark of Suez’s narrative fiction, the novel unfolds at a vertiginous pace. A recurring theme in Suez’s fiction is authoritarianism, specifically the imposition of power over the weak and defenseless. A fan of Quentin Tarantino films, Suez refers to The Devil’s Country as her Patagonian Western.

Translated by: Rhonda Dahl Buchanan