Carnaval Fever

Electric Literature, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year“Terrifically translated from the Spanish by Madeleine Arenivar … A short book, Ortiz Ruano’s novel is both exhilarating and exhausting—just enough to make this reader happy that Carnival comes around only once a year.” —Rien Fertel, The Times-Picayune“Evocative and captivating.” —Karla J. Strand, Ms.“Written with unsparing sensual velocity, the novel Carnaval Fever is about family and cultural complexities and an exuberant, troubled girlhood … leading into the book’s somber, integral conclusion.” —Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews“Carnaval Fever by Yuliana Ortiz Ruano is a celebration of Afro-Ecuadorian identity and female resilience … Through it all, it is the power of sisterhood that will ensure the continued existence of the community, as it goes through heartbreaks, migration, and violence.” —Linnea Gradin, Electric Literature“In this wondrous novel, both life’s potential for beauty and harshness sing together. Ortiz has written a story you will not forget.” —Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain Gang All-Stars “I totally fell in love with Ainhoa’s voice, her freshness, her irrepressible curiosity, her refusal to be tamed.” —Julia Alvarez“I read Carnaval Fever in one sitting. Yuliana Ortiz Ruano captures the way young Afro-Ecuadorian women build community by holding on to each other, and find ways to protect one another against a cruel world. Poetic, brutally honest, and deeply introspective, Ainhoa’s story hooks into your heart and haunts you long after the last page is turned.” —Zoraida Córdova, award-winning author of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina

YULIANA ORTIZ RUANO (Esmeraldas, Ecuador, 1992) is an Afro music DJ. A novelist and a poet, she is the author of the collections Sovoz, Canciones desde el fin del mundo, and Cuaderno del imposible retorno a Pangea. Carnaval Fever won the Joaquín Gallegos Lara National Fiction Prize, the Primo Romanzo Latinoamericano Award, and the PEN Presents English PEN Award.