A witch is found dead in a canal in rural Mexico, and the investigation spirals into a portrait of poverty, violence, sexuality, and corruption told in long, breathless, unpunctuated sentences. Melchor writes like a flood. The prose is physically overwhelming, the content brutal, and the result is one of the most important Mexican novels of the century. Not for the squeamish, and it doesn't care.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.