From the author of Tender Is the Flesh comes another brutal yet mesmerizing vision of humanity undone. In The Unworthy, Agustina Bazterrica imagines a world consumed by climate collapse and desperation, where one woman survives inside a secretive religious order that thrives on submission and silence. From her isolated cell, she writes her story in scraps of ink, dirt, and blood—confessing, questioning, and unraveling as the walls of her faith begin to crack.
This is horror not of jump scares, but of ideology and indoctrination. The convent’s rigid hierarchy—the Enlightened and the Unworthy—mirrors the broken world beyond its gates, one where water is scarce, and mercy even scarcer. When a new woman arrives and challenges what the narrator believes to be truth, the cracks widen. What emerges is a story about power, memory, and the price of obedience in a collapsing world.
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