Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico

At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city.

Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city 's cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today--one of the world's leading cultural and financial centers.

In this deeply iconoclastic book, Villoro organizes his text around a recurring series of topics: "Living in the City," "City Characters," "Shocks," "Crossings," and "Ceremonies." What he achieves, miraculously, is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City's genius loci, its spirit of place.

Author: Juan Villoro
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 03/23/2021
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.46lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.40w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781524748883


Award: Kirkus Prize - Finalist


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 10/01/2020 pg. 52
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2021
Publishers Weekly 01/25/2021
Library Journal 02/01/2021 pg. 95
Booklist 02/01/2021 pg. 15

About the Author
JUAN VILLORO is Mexico's preeminent novelist. Born in Mexico City in 1956, he is the author of half a dozen prize-winning novels and is also a journalist. In 2004, he received the Herralde Prizefor his novel El testigo (The Witness).