Overview

A young mother in Mexico City, captive to a past that both overwhelms and liberates her, and a house she cannot abandon or fully occupy, writes a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. A young translator, adrift in Harlem, is desperate to translate and publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet who lived in Harlem during the 1920s and whose ghostly presence haunts her in the city's subways. And Gilberto Owen, dying in Philadelphia in the 1950s, convinced he is slowly disappearing, recalls his heyday decades before; his friendships with Nella Larsen and Federico Garcia Lorca; and the young woman in a red coat he saw in the windows of passing trains. As the voices of the narrators overlap and merge, they drift into one single stream, an elegiac evocation of love and loss. Valeria Luiselli's debut signals the arrival of a major international writer and an unexpected and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.

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9781483017983

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Reviews

"An extraordinary new literary talent. -- ""Daily Telegraph (London)"" In part a portrait of the artist as a young woman, this deceptively modest-seeming, astonishingly inventive novel creates an extraordinary intimacy, a sensibility so alive it quietly takes over all your senses, quivering through your nerve endings, opening your eyes and heart. Youth, from unruly student years to early motherhood and a loving marriage-and then, in the book's second half, wilder and something else altogether, the fearless, half-mad imagination of youth, I might as well call it-has rarely been so freshly, charmingly, and unforgettably portrayed. Valeria Luiselli is a masterful, entirely original writer. -- ""Francisco Goldman, award-winning author of Say Her Name"" Lovely and mysterious. -- ""Wall Street Journal"" Luiselli's haunting debut novel...erodes the concrete borders of everyday life with a beautiful, melancholy contemplation of disappearance...Luiselli plays with the idea of time and identity with grace and intuition. -- ""Publishers Weekly (starred review)"" Luiselli's novel stands apart from most Latin American fiction. She avoids worn-out narratives about drug wars and violence, and her downbeat supernaturalism feels quite different from the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Concerned, above all, with literature's ability to transcend time and space, Faces in the Crowd signals the appearance of an exciting female voice to join a new wave of Latino writers. -- ""Observer (London)"" Reminiscent of Roberto Bolano and Andre Gide, Luiselli navigates a dynamic, ghostly world between worlds, crisscrossing fact and fiction. Few books are as sure to baffle, surprise, and reward readers as the strange, shifty experiment that is Luiselli's fiction debut. -- ""Booklist"" Valeria Luiselli's Faces in the Crowd is like nothing I've read in a while...Its musings on obsession and ambition are haunting, and its sense of place is fantastic. -- ""Electric Literature"""

Lovely and mysterious. -- Wall Street Journal An extraordinary new literary talent. -- Daily Telegraph (London) Luiselli's novel stands apart from most Latin American fiction. She avoids worn-out narratives about drug wars and violence, and her downbeat supernaturalism feels quite different from the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Concerned, above all, with literature's ability to transcend time and space, Faces in the Crowd signals the appearance of an exciting female voice to join a new wave of Latino writers. -- Observer (London) Valeria Luiselli's Faces in the Crowd is like nothing I've read in a while...Its musings on obsession and ambition are haunting, and its sense of place is fantastic. -- Electric Literature Luiselli's haunting debut novel...erodes the concrete borders of everyday life with a beautiful, melancholy contemplation of disappearance...Luiselli plays with the idea of time and identity with grace and intuition. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Reminiscent of Roberto Bolano and Andre Gide, Luiselli navigates a dynamic, ghostly world between worlds, crisscrossing fact and fiction. Few books are as sure to baffle, surprise, and reward readers as the strange, shifty experiment that is Luiselli's fiction debut. -- Booklist In part a portrait of the artist as a young woman, this deceptively modest-seeming, astonishingly inventive novel creates an extraordinary intimacy, a sensibility so alive it quietly takes over all your senses, quivering through your nerve endings, opening your eyes and heart. Youth, from unruly student years to early motherhood and a loving marriage-and then, in the book's second half, wilder and something else altogether, the fearless, half-mad imagination of youth, I might as well call it-has rarely been so freshly, charmingly, and unforgettably portrayed. Valeria Luiselli is a masterful, entirely original writer. -- Francisco Goldman, award-winning author of Say Her Name

In part a portrait of the artist as a young woman, this deceptively modest-seeming, astonishingly inventive novel creates an extraordinary intimacy, a sensibility so alive it quietly takes over all your senses, quivering through your nerve endings, opening your eyes and heart. Youth, from unruly student years to early motherhood and a loving marriage-and then, in the book's second half, wilder and something else altogether, the fearless, half-mad imagination of youth, I might as well call it-has rarely been so freshly, charmingly, and unforgettably portrayed. Valeria Luiselli is a masterful, entirely original writer. -- Francisco Goldman, award-winning author of Say Her Name Reminiscent of Roberto Bolano and Andre Gide, Luiselli navigates a dynamic, ghostly world between worlds, crisscrossing fact and fiction. Few books are as sure to baffle, surprise, and reward readers as the strange, shifty experiment that is Luiselli's fiction debut. -- Booklist Luiselli's haunting debut novel...erodes the concrete borders of everyday life with a beautiful, melancholy contemplation of disappearance...Luiselli plays with the idea of time and identity with grace and intuition. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Valeria Luiselli's Faces in the Crowd is like nothing I've read in a while...Its musings on obsession and ambition are haunting, and its sense of place is fantastic. -- Electric Literature Luiselli's novel stands apart from most Latin American fiction. She avoids worn-out narratives about drug wars and violence, and her downbeat supernaturalism feels quite different from the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Concerned, above all, with literature's ability to transcend time and space, Faces in the Crowd signals the appearance of an exciting female voice to join a new wave of Latino writers. -- Observer (London) An extraordinary new literary talent. -- Daily Telegraph (London) Lovely and mysterious. -- Wall Street Journal

Author Information

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. In 2014 she was honored as part of the National Book Foundation's list of 5 under 35. Her debut novel, Faces in the Crowd, earned rave reviews and won the Los Angeles Times' 2015 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Luiselli's fiction and essays have been translated into many languages, and her work has appeared in such publications as Granta, McSweeney's, and the New York Times Christina MacSweeney has an MA in literary translation from the University of East Anglia. She has translated Valeria Luiselli's novel Faces in the Crowd and collection of essays, Sidewalks. She has also contributed to a wide variety of literary magazines and websites, including McSweeney's, Brick magazine, and Granta. Armando Duran has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon. Roxanne Hernandez is an audio narrator and a top narrator choice for young adult, adult drama, and Latin American/Chicano literature. She was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2011.

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