Bad Habit

Alana S. Portero's debut novel is a coming-of-age story about a young trans woman from the working class, raised in a blue-collar district of Madrid in the 1980s and 1990s. The narrator lives in a lively but poor district as the city changes around her, from the heroin epidemic to calls for worker solidarity and the pulse of its night scene, and she grows detached from the world and from herself. Portero ties gender to class and writes about the search for identity and the strength of sisterhood and community. First published in Spain as La mala costumbre, the novel became a commercial success and has been translated into 17 languages; Mara Faye Lethem wrote the English version.

Dua Lipa selected it as her Service95 Book Club read for September 2024.