THE UNWORTHY by Agustina Bazterrica

Translated by Sarah Moses

A few years ago, Agustina Bazterrica blew the literary horror world wide open with her stomach-turning cannibal supernova, Tender Is The Flesh. Since then fans - by which I mean masochists - have been eager to see what she’d do next. It’s hard to say, then, what most will make of The Unworthy because it’s both bloody (pun intended) good and disappointingly reminiscent of too many alt-cultural touch points to rise to its potential.

You will be shocked, and I mean SHOCKED, to hear it takes place after some cataclysmic event. Ecological disaster? Human idiocy? Same same. A group of young women live cloistered in a religious compound, beholden to the whim of the evil Superior Sister. They’re the Unworthy and they are routinely subjected to horrible abuse. They aspire to become Enlightened. Or Minor Saints who get their eyes sewed shut. Career goals, right?

Look, as a sustained vision of spec-fic gothic horror, Bazterrica has totally nailed it (#sorrynotsorry). But when a mysterious stranger plopped over the fence and became both love interest and messianic figure for the narrator, I couldn’t get past the heavy Shyamalan The Village vibes to really buy into it all. Style over substance, methinks.

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica (Tr. Sarah Moses)
Pushkin Press, 2025
170 pages