Books & Books and Miami Book Fair present…

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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 flaneur, 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,” “Shocks,” “Crossings,” and “Ceremonies.” What he achieves, miraculously, is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City’s genius loci, its spirit of place.

JUAN VILLORO is Mexico’s preeminent novelist. Born in Mexico City in 1956, he is the author of half a dozen prize-winning novels and is also a journalist. In 2004, he received the Herralde Prizefor his novel El testigo (The Witness).

FRANCISCO GOLDMAN has published five novels and two books of non-fiction. His most recent novel is Monkey Boy, is about a middle-aged writer who grapples with his heritage, career and growing up Guatemalen and Jewish in America. His books have been published in 16 languages. Francisco has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Cullman Center Fellow at the NY Public Library, and a Berlin Fellow at the American Academy. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also received PENMexico’s 2017 Award for Journalistic and Literary Excellence. He has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The Believer, and many other publications. He directs the Aura Estrada Prize and lives in Mexico City.

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Horizontal Vertigo: A Virtual Evening with Juan Villoro and Francisco Goldman