International Book Group – Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor
The International Book Group at West Falmouth Library is a volunteer-led group that meets on the first Wednesday of each month 3:45-5 p.m. Selections have either foreign settings or foreign authors, usually both. New members are always welcome! Annual registration is requested to receive important communications about schedule or location changes; register below. Meetings are both in-person and on Zoom.
“Hurricane Season is, first and foremost, a horror story―its horror coming from rather than contrasting with the lyricism of Melchor’s prose. Instead of supplying a welcome breeze in the heat, the local river is where the children find the Witch’s body. Sophie Hughes’s translation renders the expansive, punishing spirit of Mexican slang impressively.”― Emmanuel Ordóñez Angulo, New York Review of Books
“Melchor’s English-language debut is a furious vortex of voices that swirl around a murder in a provincial Mexican town. Forceful, frenzied, violent, and uncompromising, Melchor’s depiction of a town ogling its own destruction is a powder keg that ignites on the first page and sustains its intense, explosive heat until its final sentence.”― Publishers Weekly
The discussion schedule is as follows:
| 9/3/2025 | Out of Darkness, Shining Light | Petina Gappah | Africa |
| 10/1/2025 | Miss Benson’s Beetle | Rachel Joyce | New Caledonia |
| 11/5/2025 | The Palace of Illusions | Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni | India |
| 12/3/2025 | The Sand Child | Tahar Ben Jelloun | Morocco |
| 1/7/2026 | The Green Road | Anne Enright | Ireland |
| 2/4/2026 | Midaq Alley | Najīb Maḥfūẓ | Cairo |
| 3/4/2026 | Birnam Wood | Eleanor Catton | New Zealand |
| 4/1/2026 | Infinite Country | Patricia Engel | Colombia |
| 5/6/2026 | The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land In Between | Hisham Matar | Cairo |
| 6/3/2026 | Hurricane Season | Fernanda Melchor | Mexico |