"An intricate, philosophical, trippy thriller." —Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed (37 Amazing New Books to Add to Your Spring Reading List)
"A CRISPR-age bender that reads like a cross between Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and a narconovela . . . Flores expertly lampoons the narcotraficante predilection for exotic collecting and baroque violence . . . Flores has [a] distinctive, irresistibly strange sensibility . . . [Tears of the Trufflepig] delivers where it counts." —Julian Lucas, Harper's
"[Tears of the Trufflepig] certainly deserves its place alongside Warren Ellis and Jeff Vandermeer, with a rustic patina that nods to the likes of Jonathan Lethem’s well-worn detectives . . . Flores’ rich characterizations, sparing prose, and vivid portrayal of the myths of Mexican culture and life along the border give what could have been a tinder-dry crime novel a strange whimsy and charm that don’t sound like anything else in genre fiction. A dryly philosophical, colorful, and disorienting thriller about grief, survival, and undead animals." —Kirkus
"The political reality of our present is all too easily recognized in this version of the future . . . a nightmarish if fascinating vision of a borderland of multiple, parallel walls; designer genertic experimentation; and gridsy violence—all dabbed liberally with folkloric strokes. For fans of magical realism and near-future settings, e.g., Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, and of Hunter S. Thompson's psychedelic energy." —Library Journal
"This wildly imaginative, highly addicting, and ultimately endearing speculative first novel offers borderlands storytelling with an sf twist." —Booklist
"A near-future picaresque of genetic manipulation, indigenous legend, and organized crime . . . [Tears of the Trufflepig] is jam-packed with excitement . . . Flores’s novel shows he has talent and creativity to spare." —Publishers Weekly
“Tears of the Trufflepig is the most engagingly original novel I’ve read in ages. So phantasmagoric, fearlessly out there, and yet it feels like a revelation, piercingly true to gritty human experience and wild as anything you might sense lurking in the Borderland night. It’s the borderland speaking to you, a tale told from the future by the wiliest, funniest, most battle-scarred cabrón in the cantina. ” —Francisco Goldman, author of The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle
“Tears of the Trufflepig is one of the most thrilling novels I’ve read in years, a true wild original. By turns a surreal page-turner, a send-up of the consolidation of wealth, and an excavation of life on the border, this novel doesn’t bend genre: it explodes the precedents and creates something completely new. Fernando A. Flores is the kind of writer who will reinvigorate your faith in the power of literature.” —Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel
“Dear Reader, do you want to experience something wonderfully new, something dizzyingly wild, something utterly strange? Do you want to discover an imagination of beauty and humor and horror and majesty? Do you want to see the world afresh? If so, then Fernando A. Flores is for you. I know, for I have met the Trufflepig and I shall never be the same again.” —Edward Carey, author of Little
“Fernando A. Flores has created a world that looks a lot like ours, but without the fat, without the self-complacency, and without the shadows that impede us from seeing the universal drama happening before our eyes. Tears of the Trufflepig is a beautiful story about the struggle between the profane and the sacred and what we can do about it.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World
"Fernando A. Flores’s wonderfully weird, myth-making Tears of the Trufflepig brings us to that hot land of absurdity: the US-Mexico border, all the while stretching ideas of family, fantasy and the fictions that create us. Flores is funny and fierce and not to be forgotten.” — Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark
"I started to think this book was Juan Rulfo meets Philip K. Dick. But Fernando A. Flores smacked me in the head. He sidesteps cliches and expectations. We expect magical realism in a Latino novel as we have come to expect dystopian stories in a sci-fi novel, but his audacity is to ignore all expectations and shoot the moon in any way he chooses. Tears of the Trufflepig is thrilling. Flores has created his own genre." —Luís Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels
“With his striking debut novel, Fernando A. Flores has refashioned a world I thought I knew—the Valley, Texas, the strange alchemy of life on a border—into a grotesquely yet familiar fever-dream. His imagined future captures the truth of our uncanny now with frightening accuracy. Funny and tragic and ultimately compelling, Tears of the Trufflepig is a gorgeous and unsettling read.” —Manuel Gonzales, author of The Regional Office is Under Attack!
“In Tears of the Trufflepig, the metaphor and actuality of the borderlands shimmer together into a vision of haptic, granular, and superbly controlled, convincing reality. A deep dream. A clear-eyed hallucination. Studded with the sweet delayed snap of the nonchalant reveal, cunning details of new worlds—demimondes, hellscapes, mythic lands— bloom naturally from scene to scene. Fernando A. Flores writes like a hard-boiled psychotropic angel.” —Eugene Lim, author of Dear Cyborgs
2019-02-17
A widower just trying to get by on the Mexican border wanders into a surreal underground obsessed with reviving extinct creatures.
Almost nobody in the business does weird fiction like FSG Originals, and this curious debut novel by Flores (Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, 2018), set in an alternative near future, certainly deserves its place alongside Warren Ellis and Jeff Vandermeer, with a rustic patina that nods to the likes of Jonathan Lethem's well-worn detectives. The main character, Esteban Bellacosa, isn't a detective exactly but more like a fixer, the guy who can get you things or get things done. Unlike his troubled brother, Oswaldo, he was born north of the border, giving him the ability and advantage of moving seamlessly between Mexico and the city of MacArthur in South Texas. He's also something of a broken man whose daughter died during a food shortage and whose wife died shortly thereafter of grief. In a bizarre backstory, a now-deceased Mexican cartel leader kidnapped a bunch of scientists during the food shortage and forced them to use a scientific process called "filtering"—"the artificial production of an organic substance"—to bring a bunch of weird animals back from extinction so the cartel could farm them out to either collectors or food markets. After Bellacosa is recruited by investigative reporter Paco Herbert to infiltrate an illegal underground dinner serving some of the oddest of filtered animals (Galapagos Gumbo, anyone?), he's inadvertently driven by the cartel into a peyote-fueled journey in pursuit of the titular Trufflepig, an equally unlikely creature worshiped by a local native tribe. Plotwise, the novel is seriously circuitous, but Flores' rich characterizations, sparing prose, and vivid portrayal of the myths of Mexican culture and life along the border give what could have been a tinder-dry crime novel a strange whimsy and charm that don't sound like anything else in genre fiction.
A dryly philosophical, colorful, and disorienting thriller about grief, survival, and undead animals.
