Fernando del Paso

Palinuro, an eternal medical student, comes from an eccentric family whose strange members include Uncle Esteban, who fled Hungary during the Great War and travelled around the world until reaching Mexico; Grandpa Francisco, a former Mason and companion of Pancho Villa; Uncle Austin, a British ex-Marine...and Estefanía, Palinuro’s first cousin, who he’s loved with an overwhelming, all-consuming passion since he was a boy. With Estefanía, he’ll spend years satisfying his wildest fantasies and incestuous desires in a room on the Plaza de Santo Domingo in Mexico City.  This book is a celebration of the body, of love and joy, but above all a celebration of life. Palinuro of Mexico has been compared to Gargantua and Pantagruel and Tristam Shandy, and brings together romantic lyricism, erudition and riotous eroticism.

“Homer and Joyce’s Ulysses are like close relatives of this immense poem about love, death and the human body.” Libération

“Del Paso provides a very thorough and very local vision, so a foreigner like myself can understand Mexican history, characteristics and idiosyncrasies.” Laura García Arroyo, Milenio

 “Del Paso is an extraordinary, radical, rigorous and ironic novelist.” Antonio Ortuño