Summary
T. C. Boyle: América
Delaney Mossbacher lives a comfortable life as a writer of nature essays, while his wife Kyra works in real estate. They consider themselves liberal humanists and live in an elite neighborhood on the outskirts of Los Angeles. One day on his way to the recycling center, speeding through a canyon in his polished Japanese car with personalized plates, Delaney hits a tiny figure that crosses the road in a suicidal dash. This is Cándido Rincón, an illegal Mexican immigrant who hides in a canyon with his seventeen-year-old pregnant wife, América, and only goes out on the road to look for work on the informal labor market. Although at first it seems that Delaney, in addition to being tormented by a guilty conscience, has solved the problem by paying Cándido twenty dollars as compensation for the pain suffered, the future will intertwine their destinies in various unexpected ways, and put their beliefs to the test.
The famous American novelist T. C. Boyle gained full recognition thanks to his novel América, originally published under the title The Tortilla Curtain. This is a tragicomic and ironic depiction of the life of the contemporary American middle class and illegal immigrants in which the author keeps his distance by not choosing a side, which caused numerous controversies, but also earned him the title of one of the best living American novelists and a worthy successor to John Steinbeck.
Biblos Newsletter
New titles, special copies and quiet recommendations from the antiquarian bookshop.