We Are Green and Trembling

This fiercely imaginative reworking of colonial history…written in luminous, wild, lyrical and inventive language… is at once playful and devastating, tender and enraging. This imaginative novel critiques familiar narratives of colonialism and empire while offering moments of startling beauty and transformation. It is a vivid and audacious story that reclaims history through language itself – International Booker Prize judges, 2026A bold and compassionate reimagining of an extraordinary queer life * Financial Times, Summer Reads of 2025 *A hallucinatory, innocent, fanciful and redemptive book. Cabezón Cámara’s historical fiction plays out like confession or revelation, a piece of real-unreal colonial apocrypha, glowing white hot, dancing like the heart of a pyre * Financial Times *Sumptuously translated by Robin Myers, We Are Green and Trembling is strikingly relevant to the present day. Cabezón Cámara uses history to illuminate and interrogate threats to trans representation and, in parallel, to interrogate the enduring, humanising effects of colonisation… [an] epic in miniature… a mercurial tale for all time * Irish Times *So sharp, so urgent, so brave. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara is one of the most authentic voices writing in Spanish today, and among her many talents is one that’s especially hard to find: not only does she challenge and incite us, not only does she confront the darkness, but she also gives us in return the subversive courage to think of ourselves as more human, more alive, and more luminous than ever – Samanta SchweblinGabriela Cabezón Cámara’s writing is singular in the Spanish language: an intrepid pulse that shakes and disarms us in the face of the wordless power, both formidable and innocent, of the jungle and the creatures it portrays – Fernanda MelchorProfoundly resonant with our current moment … Offers a searing critique of modernity’s colonial echoes: a resurgence of far-right ideology, cultural erasure, and gender-based oppression … A story that is not only inclusive but also redemptive—anchored in the richness of language, the beauty of the natural world, and the power of storytelling to reclaim what history tries to erase * Chicago Review of Books *“Cabezón Cámara’s entrancing poetry reminds us how magical and frankly unpleasant it is to live through history * New York Times *This is the truth of Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s literature: it’s capable of questioning the very conception of the Western world through beauty. – Brenda NavarroMyers translates Cámara’s lyrical prose to gorgeous effect, turning even the most brutal of Antonio’s adventures into a beautiful reading experience… transformative writing—for character and reader alike * The Rumpus *Polyphonic… A seamless, fever-dreamy exposé of inhumane colonialism, religiosity, and genocide * Booklist *Sensuous and searing—a queer anticolonial picaresque * Publishers Weekly *At the same time futuristic and ancestral. Its luminous prose pulses several times to moments of absolute radiance * World Literature Today *The intensity of Gabriela Cabezón Camára’s moral commitment shines through… she has a tender love for her marginalized subjects, and for the jungle that they call home * Times Literary Supplement *

Gabriela Cabez n Camara’s previous novels are Slum Virgin, Romance of the Blonde Brunette and The Adventures of China Iron, which was shortlisted for the International Booker and Medicis prizes. She is an environmental activist and a co-founder of the feminist movement Ni una menos.