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A City Called Mexico
by Juan Villoro
At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city.
Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flâneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city's cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today--one of the world's leading cultural and financial centers. In this deeply iconoclastic book, Villoro organizes his text around a recurring series of topics: "Living in the City," "City Characters," and "Shocks, Crossings, and Ceremonies." What he achieves, miraculously, is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City's genius loci, its spirit of place.
"A deeply learned appreciation of the author's native Mexico City...both brittle and funny...Celebrating food, wandering through earthquake-struck ruins, reflecting on literary heroes, Villoro makes an excellent Virgil. An unparalleled portrait of a city in danger of growing past all reasonable limits." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A]n erudite and idiosyncratic look at Mexico City...Though Villoro's fragmentary approach can be disorienting, this is a stimulating portrait of one of the world's most mind-bending metropolises." - Publishers Weekly
"Villoro applies his witty and incisive pen to the monster that is Mexico City...Villoro's voice is engaging, and the subject matter, fascinating...An unusual and rewarding read for all who love or are intrigued by Mexico City." - Booklist
"Villoro is not for the casual reader but for those who are interested in a deeply complex yet personal social history of Mexico City. The book serves as a nice complement to The Mexico City Reader (2004)." - Library Journal
This information about Horizontal Vertigo was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Born in Mexico City in 1956, Juan Villoro is Mexico's preeminent novelist. Author of a half-dozen prizewinning novels, Villoro is also a journalist. In 2004 he received the Herralde Prize for his novel El testigo.
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