Long before he was the taco seller whose 'Gringo Dog' recipe made him famous throughout Mexico City, our hero was an aspiring artist: an artist, that is, till his would-be girlfriend was stolen by Diego Rivera, and his dreams snuffed out by his hypochondriac mother. Now our hero is resident in a retirement home, where fending off boredom is far more gruelling than making tacos. Plagued by the literary salon that bumps about his building's lobby and haunted by the self-pitying ghost of a neglected artist, Villalobos' old man can't help but misbehave: he antagonises his neighbours, tortures American missionaries with passages from Adorno, and flirts with the revolutionary greengrocer. A delicious take-down of pretensions to cultural posterity, I'll Sell You a Dog is a comic novel whose absurd inventions, scurrilous antics and oddball characters are vintage Villalobos.
Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, 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 lived in Barcelona for several years, then moved to 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.
Title: I'll Sell You a Dog
Author: Villalobos, Juan Pablo
ISBN: 9781908276742
Binding:
Publisher: And Other Stories
Publication Date: 2016-08-04
Number of Pages: 256
Weight: 0.5036 kg
'I'll Sell You A Dog is a reminder of how effortless literature should be to love. This 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 ------- 'A wry, sardonic romp made even more vibrant by its various satires and absurdities ... [Villalobos] takes on Mexican history, literary theory, and the just-scraping-by lives of the 99 percent, all while telling a damn good story.' Starred Review, Kirkus ------- '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 recognizable ... 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 Garcia Ramirez, Letras Libras ------- 'With this, his third and brutal novel, Villalobos is confirmed as the definition of new Mexican literature.' Matias Nespolo, El Mundo ------- 'Villalobos 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 ------- Praise for Quesadillas: 'Short, dark, comic, ribald and surreal ... manic-impressive.' Dwight Garner, New York Times ------- 'Black comedy done with a light touch, it's stylish, scabrous, and hugely enjoyable.' Justine Jordan, Best Books of 2013, The Guardian ------- 'Guaranteed to entertain, from its attention-grabbing opening line to its gloriously bizarre climax.' Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times ------- 'This book will deliver a much-needed jolt to the Anglosphere cocooned in its realism-induced narcolepsy.' Neel Mukherjee ------- 'Villalobos's latest book, Quesadillas, is surreal, and not without laughs - the stoner uncle is called Pink Floyd.' Sinead Gleeson, Irish Times ------- 'A raucous picaresque ... in its extreme situations and fantastical occurrences we see a concerted attack on literary realism.' Times Literary Supplement ------- 'A vibrant, comic novel.' Leigh Newman, Oprah.com ------- Praise for Down the Rabbit Hole: 'A pint-size novel about innocence, beastliness and a child learning the lingo in a drug wonderland. Funny, convincing, appalling, it's a punch-packer for one so small.' Ali Smith, Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph ------- 'Down the Rabbit Hole is a miniature high-speed experiment with perspective ... a deliberate, wild attack on the conventions of literature.' Adam Thirlwell ------- 'That rarest of animals, a book that is, to all intents and purposes, perfect.' Sarah Churchwell, Book of the Year in the New Statesman ------- 'Juan Pablo Villalobos, channeled Mexico's drug wars via the voice of a narco-baron's son in his touching and invigorating Down the Rabbit Hole.' Boyd Tonkin, Best Fiction 2011, The Independent ------- 'If you're going to have an imprisoned child narrate a novel, then not so much as a word should be out of place. There are no such slips in Juan Pablo Villalobos's debut novella. We have here a control over the material which is so tight it is almost claustrophobic ... This is a novel about failing to understand the bigger picture, and in its absence we can see it more clearly.' Nicholas Lezard, Choice of the Week, The Guardian ------- 'In Villalobos's small but perfectly formed 2011 debut novel, reality and surreality overlap in a darkly comic tale that offers a fresh take on Mexico's nasty narco-wars.' Laura Diaz, The Best Books on Mexico, The Guardian ------- 'The cumulative parodic effect is chillingly powerful.' Edward King, Sunday Times
