¿Hay vida en la tierra?
Juan Villoro
FICTION | 2014 | 376 pages
This book contains one hundred stories as diverse as they are overwhelming, told in compelling prose. Juan Villoro analyzes the strange mystery of being Mexican (including the impact of technology on relationships), develops a theory about the Mariachi, witnesses a confession from the Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oé, meets two tortoises at the Dachau concentration camp, opens a suitcase that contains the pain of the Spanish Republican exile, takes on the huge challenge of ordering a cappuccino, and designs an episode of The Simpsons that takes place in Mexico’s Distrito Federal. A hilarious catalogue of the paranoias, misunderstandings, annoyances and dreams that make up daily life, ¿Hay vida en la Tierra? becomes a one-of-a-kind portrait of our time. The sharp aphorisms in this book could come from Nietzsche, a fortune cookie, a Kung-Fu guru, a lost taxi driver, a seven-year-old girl, or a depressed hairdresser.
An essential guide to understanding how the present becomes tradition, ¿Hay vida en la Tierra? reveals secrets like how to maintain friendships, arrive at a destination with just the right delay, and convey a farewell like an epic poem. Villoro, in a first-class literary exhibition, manages to give the confusion of daily life a sense of order through his narrative.
RIGHTS: spanish ANAGRAMA | italian SUR
“A vision that is compelling and precise; it never ceases and is tireless.”
“An observer of reality. Small stories that try to tie individual destiny with an outside world that is in constant flux.”
“Despite being made up of independent pieces, the texts simulate a cohesion by repeating characters or references underneath the unique perspective of this brilliant Mexican writer...Prose as unforgettable as the dozens of characters that it describes; demonstrating the abilities that makes this such an unforgettable and original writer.”
“Villoro is one of the most important and exportable writers in Mexico. An ironic genius who here applies his talents to that peculiar genre which Juan José Millás calls the ‘anti-story’ (…) A happy prose, which is extremely agile and sparkling and which seems (seems) simple and urgent (…) Portrayed with a refreshing and tender sarcasm, Mexico appears hard, unpunctual, greedy and ranchero: ‘this country lacks three things: security, social justice and strikers.’”
BY JUAN VILLORO:
No soy un robot
NONFICTION, 2024
La figura del mundo
FICTION, 2023
La tierra de la gran promesa
FICTION, 2021
El vértigo horizontal
FICTION, 2019
Llamadas de Amsterdam
FICTION, 2018
¿Hay vida en la tierra?
FICTION, 2014
Balón dividido
NONFICTION, 2014
Conferencia sobre la lluvia
THEATER, 2014
Arrecife
FICTION, 2012
El libro salvaje
CHILDREN’S, 2008
Los culpables
SHORT STORIES, 2008
Dios es redondo
NONFICTION, 2006
El testigo
FICTION, 2004
El disparo de Argón
FICTION, 1991