Ill Sell You a Dog by Juan Pablo Villalobos
A painter-turned-taco-seller, famous in Mexico City for his Gringo Dog recipe, hates retirement. Plagued by the literary salon bumping about his buildings lobby, haunted by the self-pitying ghost of a neglected artist, he cant help but misbehave and in so doing delivers a deliciously absurdist take-down of pretensions to cultural posterity.
‘I'll Sell You A Dog is a reminder of how effortless literature should be to loveThis unexpected ride through a character's second childhood, his building, neighbourhood and history is so magically twisted that it could be real. As ever Villalobos writes a peephole through politics and time, to simply watch us dance in all our lurid whimsy.' * DBC Pierre *
‘Villalobos subjects the colourful and at times very funny plot to a rigorously, gracefully applied style, which never projects reality but rather, sentence by sentence, constructs a parallel reality upon it . . . Nothing is real and yet at the same time, everything is recognisable . . . Villalobos has found a tone and a rhythm all his own, unlike anything else in Mexican fiction today. He makes the reader laugh at the absurd and as he does so, he reveals the senselessness of the world.’ -- Fernando García Ramírez * Letras Libras *
‘With this, his third novel, Villalobos is confirmed as the definition of new Mexican literature.’ -- Matías Néspolo * El Mundo *
‘Villalobos’s farce spares no one. And with the laughter there emerges a compassion for people living marginal lives which positions the novel on the side of the unexpected and unknown, as the novel demands the imagination’s autonomy over reality, thus rebuking the conventions of fiction in a way that is as stimulating as the novel’s humour.’ -- Francisco Solano * El Pais *
‘Villalobos subjects the colourful and at times very funny plot to a rigorously, gracefully applied style, which never projects reality but rather, sentence by sentence, constructs a parallel reality upon it . . . Nothing is real and yet at the same time, everything is recognisable . . . Villalobos has found a tone and a rhythm all his own, unlike anything else in Mexican fiction today. He makes the reader laugh at the absurd and as he does so, he reveals the senselessness of the world.’ -- Fernando García Ramírez * Letras Libras *
‘With this, his third novel, Villalobos is confirmed as the definition of new Mexican literature.’ -- Matías Néspolo * El Mundo *
‘Villalobos’s farce spares no one. And with the laughter there emerges a compassion for people living marginal lives which positions the novel on the side of the unexpected and unknown, as the novel demands the imagination’s autonomy over reality, thus rebuking the conventions of fiction in a way that is as stimulating as the novel’s humour.’ -- Francisco Solano * El Pais *
Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Mexico in 1973. He’s the author of Down the Rabbit Hole (2011) and Quesadillas (2013), both published by And Other Stories. His novels have been translated into fifteen languages. He writes for several publications including Letras Libres, Gatopardo, Granta and the English Pen blog, and translates Brazilian literature into Spanish. He has lived in Barcelona and Brazil, and is now back in Spain. He is married with two Mexican-Brazilian-Italian-Catalan children. Rosalind Harvey was born in Bristol in 1982. Her translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos’s novel Down the Rabbit Hole was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. She runs regular translation-related public events in the UK and is a founding member and chair of the Emerging Translators Network, an advice and support network for early-career literary translators.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781908276742 |
| ISBN 10 | 1908276746 |
| Title | Ill Sell You a Dog |
| Author | Juan Pablo Villalobos |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | And Other Stories |
| Year published | 2016-08-04 |
| Number of pages | 256 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |