Sidewalks

Evocative, erudite and consistently surprising, these narrative essays explore the places - real and imagined - that shape our lives. Whether wandering the familiar streets of her neighbourhood, revisiting the landmarks of her past, or getting lost in a foreign city, Valeria Luiselli plots a unique and exhilarating course that traces unexpected pathways between diverse ideas and reveals the world from a fresh perspective. Here, we follow Luiselli as she cycles around Mexico City, shares a cigarette with the night porter in her Harlem apartment, and hunts down a poet's tomb in Venice. Each location sparks Luiselli's nimble curiosity and prompts imaginative reflections and inventions on topics as varied as the fluidity of identity, the elusiveness of words that can't be translated, the competing methods of arranging a bookcase, and the way that city-dwellers evade eye-contact with their neighbours while spying on their lives. Sidewalks cements Luiselli's reputation as one of Latin America's most original, smart and exciting new literary voices.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983. Her novels and essays have been widely translated and her work has been published in magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney's. She has collaborated with artists in numerous multidisciplinary projects; among those, she has written a ballet libretto for the British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, which was performed by the New York City Ballet in Lincoln Center. She is studying for a a PhD in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Granta published her first novel, Faces in the Crowd, in 2012, and her collection of essays, Sidewalks, in 2013. Her second novel, The Story of My Teeth, is forthcoming from Granta. She has been named as one of the 20 best Mexican writers under 40 received a National Book Foundation '5 under 35' award.