Palinuro of Mexico

by Fernando del Paso

Book Overview

Winner of Mexico's Premio Novela Mexico, Spain's Romulo Gallegos Prize for best Spanish-language novel, and France's Priz de Meilleur Livre Etranger for best foreign book, Palinuro of Mexico is a masterpiece which ranks with the finest achievements of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Palinuro, a medical student, is born into a polygenetic family: Uncle Esteban, who fled from Hungary during...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1628975636
• ISBN13: 9781628975635
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 696 Pages

Customer Reviews

Excellent book

Hey, i'm looking for some contact with Fernando del Paso, 'cos i wonder if he could give us a speech, or something in the Medicine School at Cuernavaca, Mexico, may you please helpe me?

Surealism as the actual reality

Palinuro of Mexico is a long surreal voyage throughout everything, full of obscure refrences, and quotations, Palinuro takes you on a trip were Mexico and all of its small surrealistic features come to light, were the abnormal is the commonplace and were Palinuro sets out on a journey of self-universal-discovery. Once you have read it you will be the same

drink it... in little gulps

so you think 100 years of solitude was the ultimate latinamerican novel? Not at all .Very well misbegotten, Palinuro de México has remained for a long time in the dark, almost surrepticiously. This is a very "natural" combo of baroque, enciclopedia and just mad characters . Of course it is political, but it is also very funny, almost overwhelmingly so. If you are looking for a taste of surrealism, a little of violence (just a little),a beguiling antihero (who happens to be a medical student and a"nice" member of mexican society) and anything else from ridiculous advertisements to a wonderful reflection on death -a-la-mexicana- involving bones and dead bodies(what do you know!) Palinuro of México is a must read for everyone who wants to taste life at its full , in all its fleshliness and with mundane curiosity, do drink it slowly for this is a book that really gets through you,it is a climax, sort of speak. And yes, it happens to be more compelling and more refined than any of Isabel Allende's novels.

The Consciousness of a Universe

Fernando del Paso's Palinuro of Mexico describes a universe in which all things gravitate between the poles of entropy and love; the entropy of history, specifically Mexican history, the entropy of science, specifically medicine, the entropy of capitalism by way of advertising; and the chaotic love of knowledge for its own sake, the forbidden love of body parts, the sometimes obstreperous love of objects, the naive, boisterous love of students, and, mostly, the achingly pure and tellingly damned love between Palinuro and his cousin, Estefania. It is impossible to compress del Paso's work into an easy synopsis; the universe it describes is the universe of Palinuro's own fantastical consciousness. Read it for the meditations of myth and history; read it for the bawdy comedy; read it for the "Shakespearean invention" (and plagiarism); read it for the sheer delirious luminous perverse willful drunkenness with words which del Paso effortlessly spins into dadaesque flesh. This is heady stuff, insanely readable, artfully compelling and damnably entertaining. Drink it deep.