Bad Habit

‘I urge you to read Alana S. Portero's Bad Habit' PEDRO ALMÓDVAR

‘Obliges the reader to hold back (or unleash) their feelings chapter after chapter’ VOGUE SPAIN

The most talked-about debut of the year’ TIME OUT SPAIN

Told in an irresistible, heartrending voice, Bad Habit takes us deep into the lives of the residents of a godforsaken Madrid neighbourhood ironically named after a holy saint.

An unnamed young trans woman grows up in a working class suburb that has no place for her. She discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a lively party scene animated by junkies, pop divas, and fallen angels. But with each step she takes forward, she finds herself confronted by a violence she does not yet know how to counter; in this thrilling and yet often terrifying world each choice can truly be a matter of life and death.

Blistering and compassionate, Bad Habit by Alana S Portero is translated by Mara Faye Lethem, and deftly illuminates the ties between gender and class, the search for identity, and the power of sisterhood. Shimmering in its lyrical beauty and vivid in its realism, Bad Habit is a mesmerising story of self-realisation that speaks to the outsider in all of us.

‘The prose acquires the weight of poetry’ EL PAIS

‘A splendid novel … an author with an extraordinary command of language, with an exquisite style, capable of portraying, with critical but never cynical eye’ EL MUNDO