Description

**Winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature**

A sumptuous and surreal historical reimagining of one of South America’s best-known trans men, Antonio de Erauso

The new novel from the International Booker-shortlisted author of The Adventures of China Iron

‘Luminous’ SAMANTA SCHWEBLIN

‘Bold and compassionate’ Financial Times

From deep in the wilds of the New World, Antonio de Erauso writes a letter to his aunt, the prioress of the convent he escaped as a young girl. Since leaving his past behind, he’s become Antonio, conquistador. Now, hiding in the jungle and hounded by the army he deserted, Antonio is caring for two Guarani girls he rescued from enslavement. But the New World has one more metamorphosis in store, which might save them all from extinction.

Tender and surreal, We Are Green and Trembling conveys glimmers of hope for the future within the brutal colonial history of Latin America, finding in the rainforest a magical space for transformation.

‘Profoundly resonant… the power of storytelling to reclaim what history tries to erase’ Chicago Review of Books

‘Sensuous and searing – a queer anticolonial picaresque’ Publishers Weekly

‘Gabriela Cabezon Camara’s writing is singular in the Spanish language’ FERNANDA MELCHOR

Translated by Robin Myers

Publisher Review

A bold and compassionate reimagining of an extraordinary queer life * Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2025* * A hallucinatory, innocent, fanciful and redemptive book. Cabezon Camara's historical fiction plays out like confession or revelation, a piece of real-unreal colonial apocrypha, glowing white hot, dancing like the heart of a pyre * Financial Times * Sumptuously translated by Robin Myers, We Are Green and Trembling is strikingly relevant to the present day. Cabezon Camara uses history to illuminate and interrogate threats to trans representation and, in parallel, to interrogate the enduring, humanising effects of colonisation... [an] epic in miniature... a mercurial tale for all time * Irish Times * So sharp, so urgent, so brave. Gabriela Cabezon Camara is one of the most authentic voices writing in Spanish today, and among her many talents is one that's especially hard to find: not only does she challenge and incite us, not only does she confront the darkness, but she also gives us in return the subversive courage to think of ourselves as more human, more alive, and more luminous than ever -- Samanta Schweblin Gabriela Cabezon Camara's writing is singular in the Spanish language: an intrepid pulse that shakes and disarms us in the face of the wordless power, both formidable and innocent, of the jungle and the creatures it portrays -- Fernanda Melchor Profoundly resonant with our current moment ... Offers a searing critique of modernity's colonial echoes: a resurgence of far-right ideology, cultural erasure, and gender-based oppression ... A story that is not only inclusive but also redemptive-anchored in the richness of language, the beauty of the natural world, and the power of storytelling to reclaim what history tries to erase * Chicago Review of Books * "Cabezon Camara's entrancing poetry reminds us how magical and frankly unpleasant it is to live through history * New York Times * This is the truth of Gabriela Cabezon Camara's literature: it's capable of questioning the very conception of the Western world through beauty. -- Brenda Navarro Myers translates Camara's lyrical prose to gorgeous effect, turning even the most brutal of Antonio's adventures into a beautiful reading experience... transformative writing-for character and reader alike * The Rumpus * Polyphonic... A seamless, fever-dreamy expose of inhumane colonialism, religiosity, and genocide * Booklist *