Quesadillas
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Anarchy in Mexico – a comic novel about screwed-up families and politics from the author of Down the Rabbit Hole.
While his father preaches Hellenic virtues and practises the art of the insult, Orestes’ mother prepares hundreds of quesadillas for Orestes and the rest of their brood: Aristotle, Archilocus, Callimachus, Electra, Castor and Pollux. She insists they are middle class, but Orestes is not convinced. And after another fraudulent election and the disappearance of his younger brothers Castor and Pollux, he heads off on an adventure. Orestes meets a procession of pilgrims, a stoner uncle called Pink Floyd and a beguiling politician who teaches him how to lie, and he learns some valuable lessons about families, truth and bovine artificial insemination.
With Quesadillas, Juan Pablo Villalobos serves up a wild banquet. Anything goes in this madcap Mexican satire about politics, big families, and what it means to be middle class.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Rosalind
Harvey
Rosalind Harvey’s translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos’ debut novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, was shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award and the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her latest translation of his work, I’ll Sell You A Dog, was longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award. She has worked on books by Guadalupe Nettel, Elvira Navarro, Enrique Vila-Matas and Héctor Abad Faciolince and is currently working on a YA title about the journeys of teenage Central American immigrants to the United States. Rosalind is also chair and co founder of the Emerging Translators Network and is a Teaching Fellow in Spanish and Translation Studies at the University of Warwick.
Rosalind Harvey’s translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos’ debut novel, Down the Rabbit Hole, was shortlisted for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award and the 2012 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her latest translation of his work, I’ll Sell You A Dog, was longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award. She has worked on books by Guadalupe Nettel, Elvira Navarro, Enrique Vila-Matas and Héctor Abad Faciolince and is currently working on a YA title about the journeys of teenage Central American immigrants to the United States. Rosalind is also chair and co founder of the Emerging Translators Network and is a Teaching Fellow in Spanish and Translation Studies at the University of Warwick.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
In Lucy Popescu’s words: Quesadillas is glorious, absurd, celebrates the fantastical and plays with notions of magic realism. But it is Villalobos’s punky, laconic style that most impresses and marks him out as a writer of distinction.”