Sidewalks - by Valeria Luiselli (Paperback)

About the Book

Cosmopolitan, vivacious essays in the tradition of Brodsky's Watermark and Benjamin's The Arcades Project by a celebrated young Mexican author.

Book Synopsis

Cosmopolitan, vivacious essays in the tradition of Brodsky's Watermark and Benjamin's The Arcades Project by a celebrated young Mexican author.

Valeria Luiselli is an evening cyclist; a literary tourist in Venice, searching for Joseph Brodsky's tomb; an excavator of her own artifacts, unpacking from a move. In essays that are as companionable as they are ambitious, she uses the city to exercise a roving, meandering intelligence, seeking out the questions embedded in our human landscapes.

Review Quotes

"A wonderful contribution to the long tradition by which authors re-imagine their cities as dream-like spaces created for them to wander around, daydream and discover." --The Los Angeles Times

"Reminiscent of Sebald and Walser, unafraid of her own authority, Luiselli has produced an essay collection less heralded than many others this year and far better." --New York Magazine

"[Luiselli's] subtexts become almost a guide--asides we might hear from the city itself, whispering to us as we walk of bicycle through it, speaking of its secrets." --Los Angeles Review of Books

"Luiselli's writing is full of verve." --The Irish Times

"Illuminating and delightful." --Flavorwire

"Luiselli's spare and probing essays touch on a variety of subjects and are unified by a capacious imagination." --SFGate

"[Faces in the Crowd and Sidewalks] have a combined weight that dwarfs the already considerable gravity they individually have." --KGB Bar

"For Luiselli, like Borges, the continuity between literature and reality is such that, if literature is a process of the imagination, then the world from which art is created is inseparably a part of that dream." --PANK

"To read Luiselli's essays is to have access to a map, a history, an passionate library, a thoughtful gaze, a sensitive and beautiful mind." --Kate Zambreno

"[Luiselli] is a keen excavator and expositor; the history of places, people, words and ideas are deftly woven together in brief tapestries of a life lived around the world." --Review 31

"Valeria Luiselli is a writer of formidable talent, destined to be an important voice in Latin American letters. Her vision and language are precise, and the power of her intellect is in evidence on every page." --Daniel Alarcon

"Luiselli's words (and Christina MacSweeney's translation) seem to flow effortlessly across the page, and one could describe these glimpses into the author's world as graceful prose poems or laments. --JacqueWine

About the Author

Valeria Luiselli was born Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. A novelist (Faces in the Crowd) and essayist (Sidewalks), her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta, and McSweeney's. In 2014, Faces in the Crowd was the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 award.