By Ebiware Duke
If everyone around you started eating human meat, would you do it too?
That’s the terrifying question Tender Is The Flesh asks and it doesn’t flinch while you squirm.
Agustina Bazterrica’s post-apocalyptic novel delivers a chilling premise: animals have become fatally contaminated, making their meat poisonous to humans. Think COVID-19… but dial it up until society collapses. Panic. Mass suicides. A complete loss of control. In response, the government makes a nightmarish decision: legalize cannibalism.
And just like that, eating human meat becomes not just normal but necessary.
The novel drops us into this horrifying world through the eyes of Marcos, a man who manages a human slaughterhouse. Yes, you read that right. Humans are now processed like cattle; bred, slaughtered, and packaged. Sanitized terms like “special meat” and “heads” are used to mask the grotesque reality.
Marcos, still grieving his son’s death and watching his marriage fall apart, begins to question the twisted moral landscape he’s trapped in. But as his story unfolds, we start to see the lines between victim and perpetrator start to blur.
Bazterrica’s writing is simple. It’s clear, concise, and emotionally brutal. She doesn’t waste words. One minute you’re reading calmly, and the next, you’re gagging as she describes, in horrifying detail, how human flesh is sliced, weighed, and sold. Her clinical tone makes the horror hit harder. There’s no dramatic flourish. Just raw, cold facts that make your stomach turn.
I’ll say this, this isn’t a book you enjoy. It’s a book you endure.
What makes Tender Is The Flesh so unnerving isn’t just the cannibalism, it’s what it reveals about us. It places humanity under a microscope and asks: what makes us human, really? Is it our empathy? Our ability to reason? Or is it all just performance… one that collapses when survival is on the line?
Bazterrica weaves in themes like racism, misogyny, sexual violence, and moral decay, though not all of them get the exploration they deserve which I would have preferred. Instead, the novel shines when it focuses on its core question: Are we any better than the animals we cage and consume?
Reading this book made me physically ill. The graphic descriptions of human processing, from farm to table, were so detailed, I had to put my food down more than once. I just couldn’t stomach it. Literally.
And yet… I couldn’t look away.
What shocked me most was the protagonist’s moral descent. Marcos begins as someone who seems different; haunted, hesitant, maybe even redeemable. But by the end, you’re forced to confront a terrifying truth: he’s not who you think he is. And that ending? I finished the last paragraph with my mouth wide open. A gut-punch. A twist so dark it leaves a stain.
If Tender Is The Flesh has one message, it’s this: no one is truly good, not when the world goes mad. Given the right circumstances, every one of us is capable of becoming a monster.
I’m giving this book ⭐⭐/5. Not because it wasn’t brilliant, but because it made me throw my food in the trash. That’s a sin I can’t forgive.
One final note: HBO has acquired the rights to adapt this into a limited series, and I honestly can’t wait to see how they bring this hellish universe to life. If done right, it’ll be unlike anything television has dared to show.
Just… maybe don’t snack while you’re watching.
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