I'll sell you a dog

By Juan Pablo Villalobos

Subjects: FICTION / Satire, FICTION / Humorous / Black Humor, Fiction, general, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Hispanic & Latino, Mexico city (mexico), fiction, Social classes, Older people, Mexico, Fiction, Artists

Description: Long before he was the taco seller whose 'Gringo Dog' recipe made him famous throughout Mexico City, our hero was an aspiring artist: an artist, that is, till his would-be girlfriend was stolen by Diego Rivera, and his dreams snuffed out by his hypochondriac mother. Now our hero is resident in a retirement home, where fending off boredom is far more grueling than making tacos. Plagued by the literary salon that bumps about his building's lobby and haunted by the self-pitying ghost of a neglected artist, Villalobos's old man can't help but misbehave: he antagonises his neighbors, tortures American missionaries with passages from Adorno, and flirts with the revolutionary greengrocer.