Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda, translated by Julia Sanches and Heather Cleary, has been longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025. The collection of interlinked short stories joins twelve other titles for the prize, which celebrates fiction in translation from all over the world.
The judges said that ‘Reservoir Bitches is a blisteringly urgent collection of interconnected stories about contemporary Mexican women. It absolutely bangs from the first page to the last. It’s extremely funny but deadly serious and we loved the energy and flair of the dual translators’ approach. It packs an enormous political and linguistic punch but is also subtle, revelatory and moving about the ways in which these women hustle, innovate, survive or don’t, in a world of labyrinthine dangers. This book weaves the riotous testimony of the living and the dead to create an expletive-rich feminist blast of Mexican literature.’
The shortlist will be announced on 8 April, with a prize ceremony taking place on 20 May.
Read an extract from the novel on the Booker website, here.
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
A debut linked story collection of gritty, streetwise, and wickedly funny fiction from Mexico.
Life’s a bitch. That’s why you gotta rattle her cage, even if she’s foaming at the mouth.
In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking…
Julia Sanches
Julia Sanches translates literature from Spanish, Portuguese, and…
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Dahlia de la Cerda
Dahlia de la Cerda is a Mexican writer and activist. She has a BA in…
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Heather Cleary
Heather Cleary is an award-winning translator of poetry and prose whose…
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