Juan Pablo Villalobos was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973, and lives in Barcelona, where he writes for various publications, including Granta, English PEN’s Writers in Transition and Matter. He has written literary criticism, film criticism, journalism,and short stories. He is member of the Mexican National System of Artists. Villalobos is the author of Down the Rabbit Hole, short-listed for The Guardian First Book Award, Quesadillas and Te Vendo Un Perro (to be published in English in 2016). His work has been translated into 15 languages. He has two Mexican-Brazilian-Catalan children. Juan Pablo Villalobos appears with the support of the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes de Mexico.

Quesadillas

It’s the 1980s in Lagos de Moreno – a town where there are more cows than people, and more priests than cows and where a poor family struggles to overcome the bizarre dangers of living in Mexico. The father, a high-school civics teacher, insists on practicing and teaching the art of the insult, while the mother prepares hundreds of quesadillas to serve to their numerous progeny. Confined to their home, the family bears witness to the revolt against the Institutional Revolutionary Party and their umpteenth electoral fraud. This political upheaval is only the beginning of Orestes’s adventures and his uproarious crusade against the boredom of rustic life and the tyranny of his older brother.