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Born under strange circumstances to a high-society teenager and a pentagenarianentrepreneur, Jerónimo Rodriguez Loera is off to an inauspicious start—then things get worse. Through an assemblage of records, letters, and firsthand testimony of Jerónimo’s past lives,Álvaro Enrigue creates a rich, observant, and dryly humorous account of class and clashing inMexican society. 
Perpendicular Lives opens in 1930s Guadalajara, but as Jerónimo struggles toward maturity in afamily plagued with infidelities, vanities, and favoritism, the story delves into Jerónimo’sprevious lives as, among others, the Mongolian widow of a cloth merchant and a monkhunterwith a penchant for gunslinging and public defecation. Under the breakdown of his ostensibleparents’ marriage, political turmoil, and the hypocrisy of New World gentry, Jerónimo mustfight for his place in his family—and the world.
Named as one of the Bogotá39 and recipient of the Joaquín Moritz Prize, Álvaro Enrigue is oneof the foremost voices in Latin American literature. In Perpendicular Lives, Enrigue’s historicalgenius and mastery of myriad genres create an unconventional, unforgettable narrative thatevokes the wry humor of Twain and the formal freedom of Joyce. The result is a mind-bending and absurdist bildungsroman that explores the meaning of the ties that bind us across class,
continents, and time.