“I can’t remember the last book that pushed science fiction’s potential for weirdness as far as Dengue Boy. Nieva’s writing is consistently revolting — he goes too far, then keeps going. But his long sentences, which flutter and swirl like a mosquito in flight, prove irresistible.”
—Charlie Jane Anders, Washington Post
“The book is classic dystopian pulp: global warming, pandemics, radioactive mutation; rich people surviving in climate-controlled enclaves; poor people living short, wretched lives. But it’s also a wildly original anti-capitalist satire . . . It’s all delightfully whimsical and absurd, but the core drama—capitalism’s discontents coming home to roost—couldn’t be more realistic.”
—Max Pearl, The Guardian
“Dizzyingly quick and bizarrely propulsive, Dengue Boy is a fresh, freaky and often perverted novel, just how they should be.”
—Our Culture, “The Best Books of 2025”
“Equally wacky and raunchy . . . Dengue Boy shines when Nieva muddles gleeful writing with horrifying subject matter. If the end-times are coming, we might as well go down laughing.”
—Maddie Bender, Science
“A brilliantly strange new novel . . . [Dengue Boy] is a grimace that turns into a grin . . . It is weirdness sliced up, spun in a salad spinner, and served with some indescribable gunk on top. It’s delicious, if you can stomach it.”
—Matt Reynolds, WIRED
“[Dengue Boy] is a demented fever dream, bilious, splenetic, awash with spilled bodily fluids and shot through with the blackest of humour . . . [Nieva splices] Ballard, Borges and Lovecraft to create an almost unclassifiable piece of work that’s both utterly engrossing and unrepentantly gross-out.”
—James Lovegrove, Financial Times
“[A] psychedelic fever dream.”
—Adam Morgan, Esquire
“As you might expect from a novel whose central character is a giant human-mosquito hybrid, ‘stylized’ doesn’t quite do justice to how offbeat Dengue Boy can get . . . It’s frequently a dizzying read, true, but there’s plenty of righteous anger at this novel’s core—and a haunting sadness that runs throughout.”
—Tobias Carroll, Reactor
“an exuberant, gore-spattered romp of a climate fiction novel, shot through with cosmic terrors and delivered in a pyretic, exclamatory style.”
—Jake Casella Brookins, Locus
“Michel Nieva’s Dengue Boy is a wild book, surprising on every page; insightful, funny and grotesque. A unique hybrid of body horror, absurdist satire and dystopian science fiction, this novel critiques capitalism and colonialism with an entrancing humorous tone and a gruesome plot.”
—Venezia Paloma, The Skinny
“Freaky, bizarr-o, and oftentimes disgusting . . . Dengue Boy is hilarious, surreal, incredibly ambitious, but not so serious enough to refrain from a good sex joke . . . I haven’t read anything like it—Nieva’s kind of freaky is the one the literary world desperately needs.”
—Sam Franzini, Pizza Bagel Press
“[Dengue Boy is] brutal and shocking, but those who buckle up are in for a wild and visceral ride.”
—Nathalie Atkinson, Everything Zoomer
★ “Delightfully gonzo and hilariously surreal, this novel turns nightmarish visions into vital art. It’s a sui generis showstopper.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
★ “A dystopian fever dream that’s equal parts poetic and profane, beautiful and splattered with gore.”
—John Keogh, Booklist, starred review
“Nieva’s English-language debut boils both into a hallucinogenic cocktail about the end of one world and the beginnings of another . . . [Dengue Boy is] a hyperkinetic, audacious grotesquerie about metamorphosis and the inevitability of change.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“An incredibly exciting new voice in speculative fiction . . . Dengue Boy is a striking reminder of the power of genre fiction to speak truth to power and to vividly reveal the uncomfortable inequalities our society is built on. It mixes plausible biological and technological speculation with cutting satire and imaginatively surreal imagery. Nieva has created a modern masterpiece, and established himself as a key new voice in speculative fiction.”
—Jonathan Thornton, The Fantasy Hive
“Michel Nieva has placed a strong bet with this steampunk novel that imagines the disappearance of the south of Latin America between gaucho literature, violent videogames and monetized diseases. Intelligent, entertaining and brutal.”
—Mariana Enriquez, author of A Sunny Place for Shady People
“An incandescent imagination that illuminates the strangeness of everything around us with just the right amounts of unease and tenderness.”
—Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive
“Do not lick this book! Dengue Boy is a psychedelic literary funhouse like no other, its richly imagined narrative mutating and reconfiguring chapter by chapter like the Dengue Boy himself. Michel Nieva’s vision of our beleaguered world two centuries into the future is at once hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, with no mercy shown for any of its survivors. Be warned though: the psychotropic effects of Dengue Boy have not been studied, but their hallucinogenic impact will linger long after you turn the final page.”
—David Demchuk, author of RED X and The Bone Mother
“Michel Nieva’s Dengue Boy is a wild book, surprising on every page; insightful, funny and grotesque. A unique hybrid of body horror, absurdist satire and dystopian science fiction, this novel critiques capitalism and colonialism with an entrancing humorous tone and a gruesome plot.” —Venezia Paloma, The Skinny
“As you might expect from a novel whose central character is a giant human-mosquito hybrid, ‘stylized’ doesn’t quite do justice to how offbeat Dengue Boy can get . . . It’s frequently a dizzying read, true, but there’s plenty of righteous anger at this novel’s core—and a haunting sadness that runs throughout.” —Tobias Carroll, Reactor
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