The heat started to relent and gradually Paso Chico ceased to be the deserted land it became after lunch, when the sun beat down brutally and not even the insects could rouse themselves to come out of their hiding places.
Paso Chico is hot, humid and claustrophobic; a fishermen’s town full of street dogs and dusty roads where nothing ever happens. Until the summer of Marga’s thirteenth birthday, when she meets Recio.
He appears like an apparition, disrupting the silence of summer siestas and revealing the strange, twisted dynamics of the town’s inhabitants. As cargo ships wait on the viscous river, a sea of mud and secrets is unleashed, love and violence living side by side in this small rural town in Uruguay.
Haunting and wry, Ladra’s debut joins the ranks of similarly elemental novels such as Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin and The Bitch by Pilar Quintana.
‘An exciting addition to contemporary Latin-American literature currently available in English.’ Dazed, Most anticipated novels of 2026
A novel about the wonder of discovering a world full of contrasts and surprises through human relationships and the experience of being a woman.’ Vogue
‘The hypnotic prose of Ladra captivates in this story set in a town called Paso Chico, where Marga, a skinny 13-year-old girl labeled as unlucky, awakens to a world yet to be discovered.’ El País
‘Bait functions less as a plot-driven narrative and more as a study of atmosphere and moral inertia, a place where the reader becomes complicit in noticing the small fractures that prelude disaster.’ Morning Star