Brilliant, chilling... The horror is made visceral by Bazterrica's feverish, mythic prose
- Laura van den Berg, New York Times
Barbaric, brutal and utterly beautiful. The Unworthy is a searing haunt of a novel that I will never forget
- Lucy Rose, author of 'The Lamb',
A masterpiece of malice... keep[s] us gripped, immersed and enthralled
Daily Mail
Brutal and aching. A perfect fever dream of a book
- Heather Darwent, author of 'The Things We Do to Our Friends',
Unflinching, uncompromising, and unforgettable. Agustina Bazterrica shines a light at the end of the brutal and bleak path we are on so that maybe, just maybe, we can turn around and forge a new one
- Paul Tremblay, author of 'The Cabin at the End of the World',
Bazterrica's world-building is perversely and unsettlingly entrancing
LA Review of Books
A novel that revels in revulsion. It's provocative, intelligent, and deeply affecting... Just make sure to carve out an afternoon to read it - you won't want to look away
Harvard Crimson
Chilling
Glamour
So cinematically gruesome that it could have been written as a treatment for an A24-produced horror film... Bazterrica's novel tries something that most writers shy away from. She makes manifest the rot inside every human
Atlantic
Wholly strange, timeless yet frighteningly timely
Vulture
Not for the faint-hearted... The world-building impresses, and Bazterrica has an often poetic turn of phrase
SFX
Unsettling, nauseating, and claustrophobic... Feminist horror has always interrogated the brutal mechanics of power, particularly in women's lives. International voices like Bazterrica's continue to push the genre into darker, more unrelenting territory
nb Magazine
A fearsomely dark, incantatory new dystopia set in a post-apocalyptic convent from the author of viral sensation Tender is the Flesh
'Barbaric, brutal and utterly beautiful. The Unworthy is a searing haunt of a novel that I will never forget' LUCY ROSE, AUTHOR OF THE LAMB
In the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, the unworthy live in fear of the Superior Sister's whip. Seething with resentment, they plot against each other and await who will ascend to the level of the Enlightened - and who will suffer the next exemplary punishment.
Risking her life, one of the unworthy keeps a diary in secret. Slowly, memories surface from a time before the world collapsed, before the Sacred Sisterhood became the only refuge.
Then Lucía arrives. She, too, is unworthy - but she is different. And her presence brings a single spark of hope to a world of darkness.