Hurricane Season spectacularly fulfills the promise of Melchor’s early works, marking a major leap in her development as a writer. In her fiction and her nonfiction, Melchor explores the social, cultural, and economic processes that underlie the contemporary history of Veracruz. Born in the city of Boca del Río, right next to Mexico’s most important trade port since colonial times, Melchor’s development as a writer has run parallel to the quick progression of the state into one of the most intense sites of violence and political corruption in the country. Melchor’s origins in Mexico’s Veracruz state, which runs along the Gulf of Mexico, are central to her work.
Shortly after, her first novel, Falsa liebre (False hare, 2013), secured her stature as one of the most interesting young writers in the country, showcasing both her unflinching style and the tropes that dominate her work: violence, the dark side of traditional masculinity, and the oppressiveness of life in Mexico’s tropical regions.
Her first book, Aquí no es Miami (This is not Miami, 2013), collected various nonfictional pieces on politics and violence in her native state of Veracruz, earning her a place in the revered tradition of crónicas, a major genre in Mexican culture combining journalism, indirect narrative styles, and essayism, popularized by writers like Carlos Monsiváis and Elena Poniatowska. Prior to the release of the novel, Melchor was already considered a rising star.
Critics praised the book’s forceful prose and compelling narrative, noting how Melchor masterfully taps into disparate literary traditions-among them, noir detective novels and modernist psychological prose-to create something very much her own. When it was originally released in Spanish in 2017, Fernanda Melchor’s Temporada de huracanes ( Hurricane Season) quickly became the Mexican novel of the year.
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