Abstrakt
Fernanda Melchor (born 1982, Veracruz, Mexico) is a Mexican writer best known for her novel Hurricane Season for which she won the 2019 Anna Seghers Prize and a place on the shortlist for the 2020 International Booker Prize. Melchor came up with the idea for the story after reading a crónica roja (crime report) about the murder of a woman whose body was discovered in a canal in rural Veracruz.
The crime was committed by a man who claimed to have killed the woman because she attempted to bewitch him. Melchor initially planned to investigate the crime further and transform it into a non-fiction novel..
However, she chose not pursue the non-fiction style due to the dangers of traveling and researching in areas with a strong presence of drug trafficking organizations. Melchor instead decided to explore the story through fiction.The novel consists of eight chapters, the first and final two of which are relatively short in length.
The other chapters are longer in length and feature detailed narration of several of the main characters of the novel. Each chapter focuses on one of the characters and their respective relationship with the murder of the Witch.
The long chapters are made up of a single block of text without paragraph divisions and are written in a colloquial language that incorporates characteristics of the Mexican oral tradition.