The Cowboy Bible and Other Stories

The Cowboy Bible and Other Stories

The English-language debut of â€œone of the most original and entertaining voices in contemporary Mexican literatureâ€ (Revista Gatopardo): a collection of surreal, ironic, and madcap stories about the comedy and brutality of life in Mexico.

â€œOne of the most extraordinary books invented by northern Mexico to comprehend itself.â€
â€”Sergio GonzÃ¡lez RodrÃguez

The provocateur and cult sensation Carlos VelÃ¡zquez has earned comparisons to Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, and William S. Burroughs, and has been called â€œa grand storytellerâ€ (Diario Jornada) and â€œan iconâ€ (Frente). In these seven surreal and unsettling tales, he portrays the comedy and brutality of a region that has captivated the North American imagination.

Akin to MÃ¡rquezâ€™s Macondo or Faulknerâ€™s Yoknapatawpha County, VelÃ¡zquezâ€™s PopSTock! is a fictional territory in a familiar but strange northern Mexico. Throughout the stories is woven the Cowboy Bibleâ€”a mystical and protean object that first appears as the talisman of a SanterÃa-practicing luchador, DJ, and art critic, then later morphs into an unbeatable marathon drinker, a scion of a fried-chicken vendor dynasty who becomes a Communist guerrilla freedom fighter, and the leather for a pair of boots so coveted that it leads a man to grant the devil a night with his wife. With such otherworldly scenarios, pop-culture panache, and VelÃ¡zquezâ€™s linguistic inventiveness, The Cowboy Bible is a brazen commentary on modern Mexican reality.

About the Author and Translator

Born in Coahuila, Mexico in 1978, Carlos VelÃ¡zquez is the author of story collections Cuco SÃ¡nchez blues (2004), The Cowboy Bible (named one of the books of the year by Reforma in 2009), and La marrana negra de la literatura rosa (2010). He received the Premio Nacional de Cuento Magdalena MondragÃ³n and has been anthologized in el Fondo de Cultura EconÃ³micaâ€™s Anuario de poesia mexicana 2007. He is currently working on his first novel.

Born in Havana, Cuba, Achy Obejas, has written fiction, poetry, and journalism. She is the author of five books, including three novels: Days of Awe, Memory Mambo, and Ruins. Her poetry chapbook, This is What Happened in Our Other Life was both a critical favorite and a bestseller. She is trained as a journalist and has worked in the alternative press, including In These Times, where she writes a monthly column, and The Chicago Tribune. A translator between Spanish and English, she translated into Spanish Junot DÃazâ€™s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This is How You Lose Her and into English such contemporary Latin American writers as Rita Indiana, F. G. Haghenbeck, and Wendy Guerra. She is the recipient of a USA Ford Fellowship, a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellowship, a team Pulitzer Prize for the series â€œGateway to Gridlockâ€ while at the Tribune, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry, the Studs Terkel Journalism Award, and a Cintas Foundation Fellowship. She is currently the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Country	USA
Author	Carlos Velázquez
Binding	Kindle Edition
EISBN	9781632060426
Format	Kindle eBook
IsAdultProduct
Label	Restless Books
Manufacturer	Restless Books
NumberOfPages	160
PublicationDate	2016-02-07
Publisher	Restless Books
ReleaseDate	2016-02-07
Studio	Restless Books

The Cowboy Bible and Other Stories

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