Wicked Weeds

Set at the contact zones between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, this is a polyphonic novel, an intense and sometimes funny pharmacopeia of love lost and humanity regained; a most original combination of Caribbean noir and science-fiction addressing issues of global relevance including novel takes on ecological/apocalyptical imbalance bound to make an impact. A Caribbean zombie--smart, gentlemanly, financially independent, and a top executive at an important pharmaceutical company--becomes obsessed with finding the formula that would reverse his condition and allow him to become "a real person." In the process, three of his closest collaborators (cerebral and calculating Isadore, wide-eyed and sentimental Mathilde, and rambunctious Patricia), guide the reluctant and baffled scientist through the unpredictable intersections of love, passion, empathy, and humanity. But the playful maze of jealousy and amorous intrigue that a living being would find easy to negotiate represents an insurmountable tangle of dangerous ambiguities for our "undead" protagonist. Wicked Weeds is put together from Isadore's scrapbook, where she has collected her boss' scientific goals and existential agony, as well as her own reflections about growing up as a Haitian descendant in the Dominican Republic and what it really means to be human. The end result is a precise combination of Caribbean noir and science-fiction, Latin American style. Wicked Weeds, A Zombie Novel combines Cabiya's expertise in fiction, graphic novels and film to create a memorable literary zombie novel of a dead man's search for his lost humanity that can now take its place alongside other leading similar novels like Jonathan Mayberry's Patient Zero, S.G. Browne's Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, Daryl Gregory's Raising Sony Mayhall, World War Z by Max Brooks, and The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell. As for the novel's immersion in orality and Caribbean folk traditions and noir it can very well align with Wade Davis' The Serpent and the Rainbow and Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Pedro Cabiya is a poet, screenwriter, and award-winning author of the bestselling novels Trance and The Head, as well as the seminal short-story collections Historias tremendas (Pen Club Book of the Year) and Historias atroces. His work has been featured in numerous international anthologies, and his open letters, opinion pieces, and essays on politics, religion, human rights, art, and science regularly become viral phenomena. He has lived in Spain, the United States, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. He currently resides in the Dominican Republic, where he is dean of Academic Affairs at the American School of Santo Domingo and senior producer at Heart of Gold Films. ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR: Jessica Ernst Powell holds a PhD in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has published numerous translations of Latin American authors, including Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Jorge Luis Borges, Cesar Vallejo, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, Edgardo Rivera Martinez, Maria Moreno, Edmundo Paz-Soldan, Liliana Heer, Alan Pauls, and Anna Lidia Vega Serova