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Fiebre Tropical

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Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times

Winner of the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction

Winner of the 2021 Ferro-Grumley Literary Award for LGBTQ Fiction

First Fiction Finalist for the 90th Annual California Book Awards

Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction

Finalist for the 2021 Firecracker Award

Long-listed for the 2021 Aspen Literary Prize

“Ebullient and assertive. . . . Francisca’s soul stinks up the place beautifully in Fiebre Tropical.”Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“What Delgado Lopera pulls from that [Miami] heat in an inimitable voice is a bold, stylistic, and deeply moving examination of generational sadness, deferred desire, and the budding seeds of personal revolution that is entirely their own.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

"Moving and hilarious. . . . This feisty coming-of-age tale introduces a funny, fresh, and indelible new voice." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A rich, deeply felt novel about family ties, immigration, sexual longing, faith, and desire. Simultaneously raw and luminous." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Its language—funny and intelligent and fresh—glitters.” —Jezebel

“Gorgeous, firecracker-like bilingual prose and a good dose of humor—even as it emotionally shatters.” —Seattle Times

“Dripping with sweat, hating, and loving the experience of being alive, feeling a heartbeat and another heartbeat and a rhythm in the world that pulses through your own blood and bones: this is the stuff of a great queer novel.” —Lambda Literary Review

“A magnificent novel, by turns electric, hilarious, sexy, thrilling, wrenching, and profound. Pa decirlo clarito: Juli Delgado Lopera is a writer of explosive talent, and this book is a fierce and radiant contribution, yes, to queer literature, Latinx literature, and immigrant literature, but also to literature, punto.” —Carolina De Robertis, author of Cantoras

“Fiebre Tropical crackles and hums like neon, embedding contagious energy in the coming-of-age story of Francisca.” —them.

"Boiling over with searing details and raw emotion, Fiebre Tropical is a spellbinding tale." —Foreword Reviews

“Fiebre Tropical is a story of migration, queerness, brokenness, and love. Juli Delgado Lopera has written a novel across borders that buzzes with verve, fierceness, and raw emotion. Delgado Lopera forks their tongue for this book, weaving English and Spanish in inspired and irreverent prose. This book is absolute music to my ears.” —Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree

 

"Fiebre Tropical is a literary explosion. In a rollicking, multilingual prose both wise and irreverent, brimming with snark and queer humor, Juli Delgado Lopera crafts a migration tale we’ve never read and badly need." —Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms

Uprooted from her comfortable life in Bogotá, Colombia, into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, fifteen-year-old Francisca is miserable and friendless in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up into an evangelical church, replete with Christian salsa, abstinent young dancers, and baptisms for the dead.

But there, Francisca also meets the magnetic Carmen: opinionated and charismatic, head of the youth group, and the pastor’s daughter. As her mother’s mental health deteriorates and her grandmother descends into alcoholism, Francisca falls more and more intensely in love with Carmen. To get closer to her, Francisca turns to Jesus to be saved, even as their relationship hurtles toward a shattering conclusion.

 

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