I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me

By Juan Pablo Villalobos

Book Overview

Now a new feature film available on Netflix

Winner of the 2016 Herralde Prize

The author of Down the Rabbit Hole delivers a hilarious and prize-winning tale of immigrants, students and gangsters in Barcelona

"I don't expect anyone to believe me," warns the narrator of this novel, a Mexican student called Juan Pablo Villalobos. He is about to fly to Barcelona on a scholarship when he's kidnapped in a bookshop and whisked away by thugs to a basement. The gangsters are threatening his cousin--a wannabe entrepreneur known to some as "Projects" and to others as "dickhead"--who is gagged and tied to a chair. The thugs say Juan Pablo must work for them. His mission? To make Laia, the daughter of a corrupt politician, fall in love with him. He accepts. . . . though not before the crime boss has forced him at gunpoint into a discussion on the limits of humour in literature. Part campus novel, part gangster thriller, I Don't Expect Anyone to Believe Me is Villalobos at his best. Exuberantly foul-mouthed and intellectually agile, this hugely entertaining novel finds the light side of difficult subjects--immigration, corruption, family loyalty and love--in a world where the difference between comedy and tragedy depends entirely on who's telling the joke.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1911508482
• ISBN13: 9781911508489
• Release Date: May 2020
• Publisher: And Other Stories
• Length: 356 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.1" x 7.7"