Quesadillas

Juan Pablo Villalobos

Winner of English PEN Award

Anarchy in Mexico – a comic novel about screwed-up politics and families from the author of Down the Rabbit Hole…

Translated by Rosalind Harvey, Introduced by Neel Mukherjee

Orestes’ mother prepares hundreds of quesadillas for Orestes and the rest of their brood. After another fraudulent election and the disappearance of his younger brothers Castor and Pollux, he takes to the road. With Quesadillas, Juan Pablo Villalobos serves up a madcap satire of politics, big families, and what it means to be middle class.

• The modern novel’s three commands are that it should be “Funny, Brutalist and Short”, in our hero BS Johnson’s words. Villalobos’ Quesadillas fulfills this perfectly.’

  Kiko Amat, prize-winning Catalan novelist

• Villalobos has come to stay – and to say loud and clear that in Mexico almost anything is possible.

  El Periódico de Catalunya

• Funny, convincing, appalling, it’s a punch-packer for one so small.

  Ali Smith, Telegraph, Book of the Year for 'Down the Rabbit Hole'

• That rarest of animals, a book that is, to all intents and purposes, perfect.

  Sarah Churchwell, New Statesman, Book of the Year, for 'Down the Rabbit Hole'

• Touching and invigorating

  Boyd Tonkin, Independent, Books of the Year, for 'Down the Rabbit Hole'