From the author of Lost Children Archive: “Masterful…a novel in which people die many times just to wake up right where they left off.”―The Paris Review
In Mexico City, a young mother is writing a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. In Harlem, a translator is desperate to publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet. And in Philadelphia, Gilberto Owen recalls his friendship with Lorca, and the young woman he saw in the windows of passing trains. Valeria Luiselli's debut signals the arrival of a major international writer and an unexpected and necessary voice in contemporary fiction.
“An extraordinary new literary talent.”—The Daily Telegraph
«In part a portrait of the artist as a young woman, this deceptively modest-seeming, astonishingly inventive novel creates an extraordinary intimacy…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
“Haunting…Luiselli plays with the idea of time and identity with grace and intuition.» —Publishers Weekly
“Lovely and eccentric…peppered with arresting imagery.”—The New York Times
“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
One of Electric Literature’s 25 Best Novels of the Year
One of Largehearted Boy’s Favorite Novels of the Year

Faces in the Crowd