Juan Pablo Villalobos – författare

For this striking, stripped-down account of youth immigration, Villalobos interviewed teens at various stages of the immigration process to illustrate their stories - the physical and emotional difficulties of their travels.He then changed certain elements of these stories in order to protect the children's identities. Each chapter brings forth the voice of one young immigrant's experience, from crossing the Mexican desert to gang violence to the 'freezers' at ICE detention centres.Together, these teen voices paint a vivid and thought-provoking picture of US-Central American immigration and the American refugee crisis, which will resonate with young readers, educators, and fans of his adult fiction alike.

Winner of the 2016 Herralde Prize“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 gangsters are threatening his cousin—a wannabe entrepreneur known to some as “Projects” and to others as “dickhead”—who is gagged and tied to a chair. The thugs say Juan Pablo must work for them. His mission? To make Laia, the daughter of a corrupt politician, fall in love with him. He accepts. . . . though not before the crime boss has forced him at gunpoint into a discussion on the limits of humour in literature. Part campus novel, part gangster thriller, I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me is Villalobos at his best. Exuberantly foul-mouthed and intellectually agile, this hugely entertaining novel finds the light side of difficult subjects—immigration, corruption, family loyalty and love—in a world where the difference between comedy and tragedy depends entirely on who’s telling the joke.Praise for Juan Pablo Villalobos:'Funny, convincing, appalling...a punch-packer.' Ali Smith'Savagely funny.' Lili Wright, New York Times

Juan Pablo Villalobos’s fifth novel adopts a gentle, fable-like tone, approaching the problem of racism from the perspective that any position as idiotic as xenophobia can only be fought with sheer absurdity.In an unnamed city, colonised by an unnamed world power, an immigrant named Gastón makes his living selling exotic vegetables to eateries around the city. He has a dog called Kitten, who’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and a good friend called Max, who’s in a deep depression after being forced to close his restaurant. Meanwhile, Max’s son, Pol, a scientist away on a scientific expedition into the Arctic, can offer little support.Gastón begins a quest, or rather three: he must search for someone to put his dog to sleep humanely; he must find a space in which to open a new restaurant with Max; and he must look into the truth behind the news being sent back by Pol: that human life may be the by-product of an ancient alien attempt at colonisation . . . and those aliens might intend to make a return visit.

After many peaceful years abroad, JP has returned home to Mexico to visit family and help care for his elderly mother. Instead, however, he finds himself at a bar, his fist inches from the face of Everardo, his sort-of childhood friend. He lands the blow and runs home. But when Everardo turns up dead the next morning, JP soon finds himself blamed for a murder that he (probably) didn't commit. What’s going on? Can Lagos really be more full of drugs, extortion, and fraud than when he left? Why is everyone offering him pills? How's he ever going to pay for his mother's medical treatment? It wasn't even that good a punch!Weaving outright hilarity with wry tenderness, The Past Pursues Us is a fast-paced and funny whodunit that lovingly speaks to the stories we tell ourselves about home: about what changes, what doesn't, and what should.

It’s the 1980s in Lagos de Moreno – a town where there are more cows than people, and more priests than cows – and a poor family is struggling to get by. The father, a school teacher, insists on practising and teaching the art of the insult, while the mother prepares hundreds of quesadillas to serve to their numerous progeny: Aristotle, Orestes, Archilochus, Callimachus, Electra, Castor and Pollux. The family witnesses a revolt against the Institutional Revolutionary Party and its umpteenth electoral fraud. This political upheaval is only the beginning of Orestes’ adventures and his uproarious crusade against the boredom of rustic life and the tyranny of his older brother. In Quesadillas Juan Pablo Villalobos serves up a wild banquet. Chock-full of inseminated cows, Polish immigrants, parading pilgrims, alien spacecraft and psychedelic watermelons, almost anything goes in this madcap Mexican satire of politics and class.