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I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me
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I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
Ideal for readers who enjoy darkly comic novels that mix crime and campus life, and those interested in contemporary Mexican literature with an intellectual and irreverent edge.
The author of Down the Rabbit Hole delivers a hilarious and prize-winning tale of immigrants, students and gangsters in Barcelona
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
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Description
I don't expect anyone to believe me, warns the narrator of this novel, a Mexican student called Juan Pablo Villalobos.
He is about to fly to Barcelona on a scholarship when he's kidnapped in a bookshop and whisked away by thugs to a basement. The gangsters are threatening his cousin—a wannabe entrepreneur known to some as 'Projects' and to others as 'dickhead'—who is gagged and tied to a chair. The thugs say Juan Pablo must work for them. His mission? To make Laia, the daughter of a corrupt politician, fall in love with him. He accepts...though not before the crime boss has forced him at gunpoint into a discussion on the limits of humour in literature.
Part campus novel, part gangster thriller, I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me is Villalobos at his best. Exuberantly foul-mouthed and intellectually agile, this hugely entertaining novel finds the light side of difficult subjects—immigration, corruption, family loyalty and love—in a world where the difference between comedy and tragedy depends entirely on who's telling the joke.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781911508489
Publisher: And Other Stories
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 30 April 2020
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: And Other Stories
Contributors:
- Translated by Daniel Hahn
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 336g
Pages: 288
Collections
About the Author
Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973. He studied marketing and Spanish literature, before working as a market researcher, and writing travel stories and literary and film criticism. He has researched topics as diverse as the influence of the avant-garde on the work of Cesar Aira and the flexibility of pipelines for electrical installations. His books include his Guardian First Book Award-shortlisted debut Down the Rabbit Hole, as well as Quesadillas and I'll Sell You a Dog. He is married with two Mexican-Brazilian-Italian-Catalan children. I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me is his fourth novel.
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with some sixty-something books to his name. His work has won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, and he has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among others.
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