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Mexico

Audiobook
Fiction: Literary
Unabridged   9 hour(s)
Publication date: 01/24/2017

Library Journal Best Books 2017

Mexico

Stories

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781681683027
Digital Download ISBN:9781681683034

Summary

Josh Barkan's astonishing collection indelibly captures the beauty, strangeness and brutality of life in modern Mexico.

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Product Description

The characters in these stories are everyday citizens—a chef, architect, nurse, high school teacher, painter, beauty queen, classical bass player, plastic surgeon, businessman, mime—simply trying to lead their lives and steer clear of violence. Yet inevitably, violence has a way of intruding on their lives. A surgeon finds himself forced into performing a risky procedure on a narco killer. A teacher struggles to protect love-struck students whose forbidden romance has put them in mortal danger. A painter's freewheeling ways land him in the back of a kidnapper's car. Again and again, the lines between "ordinary life" and cartel violence are shown to be paper thin, with tragic results. Though the lives of Mexico's characters are effected by the corrupt and dangerous subculture of their country, these are much more than simple "crime stories." They are complicated and deeply moving tales that tap into universal and enduringly powerful themes: love and loss, religion, family relationships, government abuse, sexual identity, professional ambition, cancer; they introduce us to characters that feel fully realized in their humanity.

Reviews/Praise

"Narrating a diverse cast with convincing versatility, Robert Fass calibrates emotions perfectly without excessive drama, so Barkan’s observant prose registers fully with readers." —Library Journal Starred Audio

"Fraught, surreal, off-kilter, and very funny." —Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winning author

"Beautiful, funny, and terrifying; Barkan has created a collection that is utterly riveting and necessary." —Karen Bender, author of Refund

"Mexico is a poignant and original collection of stories." —Jennifer Clement, author of Prayers for the Stolen

"Comical yet eerie . . . Mexico is an ensemble performance for which Barkan composed all of the parts." —New York Times

Author Bio

Josh Barkan's fiction has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, and the Lightship International Short Story Prize. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, he received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.