I'm not asking anyone to believe me, Juan Pablo Villalobos

«I'm not going to ask anyone to believe me,» the various narrators and characters of this story frequently warn us, in which the ordinary transforms into a delirium without one quite knowing how, in which the strange ends up being normal, and in which we can do nothing but laugh, because everything is hilarious, everyday, and surreal all at once, like life itself. It all begins with a cousin who, even as a boy, showed signs of being a con artist, and who now gets the protagonist – a Mexican who travels to Barcelona with his girlfriend to study literature, and who also shares the author's name – into a monumental mess: a «high-level business» that turns his stay in the city into a kind of black humor crime novel, one of those he would like to write. Through these pages parades a motley crew of priceless characters: dangerous mobsters – el licenciado, Chucky, the Chinese guy –; a girlfriend named Valentina who reads The Savage Detectives and is on the verge of destitution and completely clueless; a girl named Laia whose father is a corrupt politician from a right-wing nationalist party; an Italian squatter who has lost his dog; a Pakistani who pretends to sell beer to avoid suspicion... And to complicate things a little more, a second Laia appears, who is a mossa d'esquadra and a redhead; a dog named Viridiana; a girl who recites verses by Alejandra Pizarnik, and even the protagonist's own mother, melodramatic, proud, and manipulative like in a good Mexican telenovela. Juan Pablo Villalobos writes like Buster Keaton acted: he makes you burst out laughing while remaining impassive, without moving a muscle. In his previous novels, he had already built his own world with endearing and eccentric characters to whom strange and hilarious things happened. And this one establishes him as an essential writer. In it, and through the odyssey of a normal man who gets involved in the most outlandish adventures, he talks to us about reality and fiction, that is, about the importance of literature in our lives, and the fundamental role of humor.