The author of Down the Rabbit Hole delivers a hilarious and prize-winning tale of immigrants, students and gangsters in Barcelona
“I don’t expect anyone to believe me,” warns the narrator of this novel, a Mexican student called Juan Pablo Villalobos. He is about to fly to Barcelona on a scholarship, when he’s kidnapped in a bookshop and whisked away by thugs to a basement. The pistol-toting gangsters are threatening his cousin, who is gagged and tied to a chair. They say Juan Pablo must work for them. His mission? To make Laia, a Mexican student in Barcelona and the daughter of a corrupt politician, fall in love with him—so he can spy on her. However, this being a Villalobos novel, naturally Juan Pablo and the crime boss first discuss the role of humor in twentieth century literature. In this novel the bad guys are not going to be whom you expect. No one is. A mash-up combining elements of the campus novel with the gangster thriller, Villalobos takes a satirical, sidelong look at immigration in Europe with inimitable wit. Winner of Spain’s prestigious Herralde Prize, I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me is Villalobos at his clever, comic best.