Near future. South Texas. Narcotics are legal and there's a new contraband on the market: ancient Olmec artifacts, shrunken indigenous heads, and filtered animals - species of animals brought back from extinction to clothe, feed, and generally amuse the very wealthy. Esteban Bellacosa has lived in the border town of MacArthur long enough to know to keep quiet and avoid the dangerous syndicates who make their money through trafficking. But his simple life starts to get complicated when the swashbuckling investigative journalist Paco Herbert invites him to come to an illegal underground dinner serving filtered animals. Bellacosa soon finds himself in the middle of an increasingly perilous, surreal, psychedelic journey, where he encounters legends of the long-disappeared Aranana Indian tribe and their object of worship: the mysterious Trufflepig, said to possess strange powers. Written with infectious verve, bold imagination, and oddball humor, Fernando A. Flores's debut novel, Tears of the Trufflepig, is an absurdist take on life along the border, an ode to the myths of Mexican culture, a dire warning against the one percent's determination to dictate society's decline, and a nuanced investigation of loss. It's also the perfect introduction to Flores: a wonderfully weird, staggeringly smart new voice in American fiction, and a mythmaker of the highest order.

A surreal debut novel set on the Texas/Mexico border, blending magical realism, sci-fi, and political parable to tell the story of an everyday man's tumble into a bizarre and sinister criminal underworld.

About the Author
Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and grew up in South Texas. He is the recipient of a 2014 literary award from the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation. His writing has appeared in the Bilingual Review, The Texas Observer, Huizache, Bat City Review, and New Border Voices: An Anthology. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he works as a bookseller.


Book Information
ISBN 9780374538330
Author Fernando A. Flores
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc
Weight(grams) 236g
Dimensions(mm) 190mm * 124mm * 22mm