In the no-man's-land of Mexico's far north-harsh desert landscapes, bruising border towns, urban wastelands and fantastical rural villages-migrants, campesinos and travelers find themselves lost between reality and delirium, tragedy and exaltation.
Ten stories with an unflinching gaze onto the fragility and brutality of life: a tabloid journalist tracks a pair of homeless lovers; a blackout extinguishes the lights of Monterrey, unleashing anxieties and criminal tendencies; a visiting teacher in a remote village witnesses a brutal incident of vigilante justice; a desperate young boy crosses the border in search of a father lost to the North.
"While the United States and Mexico avert their eyes from the horrors oftheir shared border, Parra is 'the desert's Dante,' as author Juan Felipe Herrera calls him on the book's cover; he enters a place everyone is afraid to see and examines its cruelties. . . . Parra's unflinching gore calls to mind those infamous Mexican murder magazines that publish graphic crime scene photos as entertainment. But the violence of No Man's Land is far from exploitative. Parra's compassion for the wretched, tortured creatures that populate the book is clear. Enduring every possible kind of suffering, they survive, and that mere survival is a triumph."—SF Station
"Eduardo Antonio Parra's short stories fill the void between traditional Latin American literature and the best new writing from south of the border. His exploding visions from desert landscapes lead us on journeys where there is no turning back. Whether our location within his world is pin-pointed or not, these vibrant texts are more lethal than the most accurate map."—Ray Gonzalez, author of Touching the Fire
"These tight stories could be photographs taken from the lurid pages of Alarma!; they depict the scarred face and psyche of modern Mexico, a country filled with casual violence and mindless rage. In a style reminiscent of Juan Rulfo’s classic work The Burning Plain, Parra gives voice to the new underdogs of Mexican society—the petty clerks, disillusioned workers, transvestites, brujos, and vengeful campesinos—and we hear their cry for a long time after."—Alejandro Murguía, author of This War Called Love
"Eduardo Antonio Parra drags you to the Maximum Mexican border-abyss: Meet the desert’s Dante, go down with a smashed fender-heart and a dangling, lustful camera-tongue. If you really wanna know what's going on in the nether-border zones of Mexico, if you truly want to come to terms with lives triturated in the psycho-suture of our times and our collective hybrid body, read this, stop fooling yourself, Parra puts it together. All you gotta do is pick it up."—Juan Felipe Herrera, author of Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler
"It’s always extremely difficult to write about the limits of human suffering without descending into voyeurism. But not for Eduardo Parra. From preop prostitutes robbed of their sex change money to loving homeless couples on the doorstep of death, Parra explores the fate of modern Mexico's lowest strata with the literary imagination of a 19th-century Russian novelist and an ethnographer's eye for detail. Simultaneously horrified and yet oddly hopeful, No Man's Land is a stunning introduction to one of Latin America's best new writers."—Joel Schalit, author of Jerusalem Calling
Eduardo Antonio Parra (Leon, Guanajuato, 1965) is the author of two collections of stories and winner of Mexico's National Prize for the Short Story.

No Man's Land: Selected Stories

Literature & Fiction

Parra, Eduardo Antonio

United States

City Lights Publishers

Premio Bellas Artes de Narrativa Colima para Obra Publicada 2020. Una odisea a través del infierno: Laberinto refleja la desolación que han vivido algunas comunidades del país, sobre todo en la región norte, durante la llamada "guerra del narco". Esta novela narra lo que han sufrido algunas regiones de México en la "guerra del narco", hasta ver sus municipios convertidos en pueblos fantasma. El viaje de ida y de regreso a la casa paterna en medio del caos y la muerte. Un relato en el que, a través de la experiencia de un par de adolescentes (Darío y su novia), filtrada por la memoria y las palabras de un hombre maduro se intentan concentrar y sintetizar ciertas experiencias que ha vivido la población al encontrarse inmersa en una guerra ajena, una guerra en la que no tenían por qué haber tomado parte. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION An odyssey through hell: Labyrinth reflects the devastation that some communities, especially in northern Mexico, have lived through during the so-called "Drug War." This novel narrates what some regions of Mexico have suffered during the "Drug War," even seeing some of their cities converted to ghost towns; the trip leaving and returning to the family home in the middle of chaos and death. Through the experiences of a pair of teenagers (Darío and his girlfriend), and filtered by memory and the words of a mature man, this is a tale that concentrates and synthesizes certain experiences that the population has lived through upon finding themselves immersed in someone else's war, a war they had no reason to take part in.

Laberinto / Labyrinth (MAPA DE LAS LENGUAS) (Spanish Edition)

Literary

Literatura Random House

When experienced hitman Ramiro Mendoza Elizondo is sent to northern Mexico to kill a businessman, he regains touch with his own past and the various stages of his death-dealing career.

Nostalgia de la Sombra : Novela (Narradores Contemporaneos) (Spanish Edition)

Joaquin Mortiz Editorial

Los límites de la noche: Relatos (Biblioteca Era) (Spanish Edition)

World Literature

Ediciones Era

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