In the English-language debut novel of one of Mexico's most poignant writers, a man guilty of a minor offense finds himself caught between the tedium of his temperate city and the growing menace of crime there.
After an accident-or "the misfortune," as his cancer-ridden father's caretaker calls it-Eduardo is sentenced to a year of community service reading to the elderly and infirm. Stripped of his driver's license and feeling impotent as he nears thirty-five, he performs his duties without comprehending what he reads, and walks the city of Cuernavaca. Once a quiet town known for its lush gardens and swimming pools, the "City of Eternal Spring" is now plagued by robberies, kidnappings, and the other myriad forms of violence bred by drug trafficking.
As he enters into the homes and lives of his listeners, Eduardo becomes entangled in a series of sinister events that will place him unexpectedly at the center of this complex community of people who occupy so much of his time. Fabio Morábito is a writer, translator, and professor at the Institute of Philological Research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Born in Egypt, Morábito grew up in Italy and relocated to Mexico when he was fifteen. He has published four books of poetry, four short-story collections, one book of essays, and two novels, and has translated into Spanish the work of many great Italian poets of the twentieth century, including Eugenio Montale and Patrizia Cavalli. Morábito has been awarded numerous prizes, most recently the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, Mexico's highest literary award, for Home Reading Service (2019). His work has been translated into several languages. He lives in Mexico City.
Curtis Bauer is a poet and translator of prose and poetry from Spanish. He is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and a Banff International Literary Translation Centre fellowship. His translation of Jeannette Clariond's Image of Absence won the International Latino Book Award for Best Nonfiction Book Translation from Spanish to English. Bauer teaches creative writing and comparative literature at Texas Tech University.
