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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Original language | |
| English | |
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MEXICO
MEXICO is a powerful, deeply original short story collection about people living in Mexico whose lives are turned upside down by the violence and chaos of the drug cartels.
MEXICO is for readers of gritty, hard-hitting literary story collections like those of Junot Diaz, Denis Johnson, Phil Klay, and Donald Ray Pollock. Josh Barkan comes with an illustrious list of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, Paterson Fiction Prize, Juniper Prize for Fiction, and the Lightship International Short Story Prize. His first published work was a short story in Saul Bellow’s literary magazine. Hogarth is thrilled to have Josh on our list, and one look at these stories will tell you why.
The characters in Josh Barkan's remarkable story collection Mexico are ordinary people--everyday citizens, expats, and travelers visiting the country for their own reasons--who find themselves inexorably caught up in and impacted by the criminality and brutality of the Mexican cartels. In these pages readers will meet a tourist who is kidnapped off the street, a teacher whose students risk death if they fall in love with the wrong person, a chef who must cook for a gangster under pain of death, a plastic surgeon forced to alter a fugitive drug lord's appearance, and many more compelling and memorable characters suddenly thrust into harrowing, life-changing situations. But for all that the characters in Mexico have their lives touched by crime, these are much more than simple "crime stories." Rather, they are complicated and deeply human tales that touch on universally recognizable themes such as a parent's desire to connect with their children, an idealistic belief in young love, and the struggle to maintain faith in a world full of hardship. Josh Barkan has a keen eye for detail and an authentic sense of place, polished over many years spent living in Mexico, and he brings this world to life with uncommon grace. As extreme as the events in these stories may be, they are always grounded in recognizable and relatable human characters. Readers will see themselves in these pages, which makes the unflinching portrait of drug violence all the more powerful.
JOSH BARKAN's fiction has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, Paterson Fiction Prize, Juniper Prize for Fiction, and the Lightship International Short Story Prize. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, he spent a year teaching in Japan, then received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first published work was the novella "Before Hiroshima," which Saul Bellow published in his literary magazine, and his writing has since appeared in Esquire and other journals. He has taught writing at Harvard, New York University, and Boston University. He currently divides his time between Mexico City and Roanoke, Virginia.
The characters in Josh Barkan's remarkable story collection Mexico are ordinary people--everyday citizens, expats, and travelers visiting the country for their own reasons--who find themselves inexorably caught up in and impacted by the criminality and brutality of the Mexican cartels. In these pages readers will meet a tourist who is kidnapped off the street, a teacher whose students risk death if they fall in love with the wrong person, a chef who must cook for a gangster under pain of death, a plastic surgeon forced to alter a fugitive drug lord's appearance, and many more compelling and memorable characters suddenly thrust into harrowing, life-changing situations. But for all that the characters in Mexico have their lives touched by crime, these are much more than simple "crime stories." Rather, they are complicated and deeply human tales that touch on universally recognizable themes such as a parent's desire to connect with their children, an idealistic belief in young love, and the struggle to maintain faith in a world full of hardship. Josh Barkan has a keen eye for detail and an authentic sense of place, polished over many years spent living in Mexico, and he brings this world to life with uncommon grace. As extreme as the events in these stories may be, they are always grounded in recognizable and relatable human characters. Readers will see themselves in these pages, which makes the unflinching portrait of drug violence all the more powerful.
JOSH BARKAN's fiction has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, Paterson Fiction Prize, Juniper Prize for Fiction, and the Lightship International Short Story Prize. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, he spent a year teaching in Japan, then received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His first published work was the novella "Before Hiroshima," which Saul Bellow published in his literary magazine, and his writing has since appeared in Esquire and other journals. He has taught writing at Harvard, New York University, and Boston University. He currently divides his time between Mexico City and Roanoke, Virginia.
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Book
Published 2017-01-24 by Hogarth |
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Book
Published 2017-01-24 by Hogarth |