Description
Book SynopsisIn the no-man''s-land of Mexico''s far north-harsh desert landscapes, bruising border towns, urban wastelands and fantastical rural villages-migrants, campesinos and travelers find themselves lost between reality and delirium, tragedy and exaltation.
Ten stories with an unflinching gaze onto the fragility and brutality of life: a tabloid journalist tracks a pair of homeless lovers; a blackout extinguishes the lights of Monterrey, unleashing anxieties and criminal tendencies; a visiting teacher in a remote village witnesses a brutal incident of vigilante justice; a desperate young boy crosses the border in search of a father lost to the North.
While the United States and Mexico avert their eyes from the horrors oftheir shared border, Parra is ''the desert''s Dante,'' as author Juan Felipe Herrera calls him on the book''s cover; he enters a place everyone is afraid to see and examines its cruelties. . . . Parra''s unflinching gore calls to mind those infamous Mexican murde
