The Gringo Champion [Paperback]

The award-winning debut novel by young Mexican author Aura Xilonen,The Gringo Championis a thrillingly inventive story about crossing borders that theLos Angeles Review of Bookscalled one of the must-read books of 2017.

Liborio has to leave Mexico, a land that has taught him little more than a keen instinct for survival. He crosses the Rio Bravo, like so many others, to reach the promised land. And in a barrio like any other, in some gringo city, this illegal immigrant tells his story.

As Liborio narrates his memories we discover a childhood scarred by malnutrition and abandonment, an adolescence lived with a sense of having nothing to lose. In his new home, he finds a job at a bookstore. He falls in love with a woman so intensely that his fantasies of her verge on obsession. And, finally, he finds himself on a path that just might save him: he becomes a boxer.

This is a migrant's story of deracination, loneliness, fear, and finally, love told in a sparkling, innovative prose. It'sMillion Dollar BabymeetsThe Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and a story of migration and hope that is as topical as it is timeless.Aura Xilonenis a novelist and filmmaker. She won the 2015 Mauricio Achar Prize for her first novel, The Gringo Champion.Praise forThe Gringo Champion

Its linguistic inventiveness, its joyful storytelling, the beauty of its characters, and its empathy to the experience of economic marginalization and migration makeThe Gringo Champion, in my view, one of the most significant and worthwhile novels of 21st-century Mexican literature.
—The Los Angeles Review of Books

“Punches, profanity and streams of offbeat argot fly from the first page of this idiosyncratic debut novel about a Mexican immigrant living on the edge of survival in an unnamed American city.”
—The New York Times Book Review

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