We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezon Camara

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature — and it’s easy to see why.

Deep in the wilds of the New World, Antonio de Erauso begins to write a letter to his aunt, the prioress of the Basque convent he once fled as a young girl. Since escaping that dead-end life, he has become Antonio — mule driver, shopkeeper, soldier, cabin boy, conquistador. He has wielded swords and slashed with daggers. He has lived.

Now, caring for two Guaraní girls he rescued from enslavement and hounded by the army he deserted, this shape-shifting protagonist contemplates one final metamorphosis — one that just might save the New World from extinction itself.

Based on the remarkable true story of Antonio de Erauso, a real figure of the Spanish conquest, this is a queer baroque satire unlike anything else on our shelves. It blends the picaresque with surreal storytelling, its language rich, wild, and utterly alive. A searing indictment of colonialism, religious tyranny, and the erasure of women and indigenous peoples — all wrapped in a narrative that crackles with dark humor and strange beauty.

At its heart, the rainforest becomes a magical space where transformation isn’t just possible. It’s necessary.

The kind of book you’ll still be thinking about long after you’ve closed the cover and stepped back out into the salt air. A genuine discovery — and exactly the sort of daring, boundary-dissolving fiction we love to press into eager hands.

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