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Valeria Luiselli is an evening cyclist; a literary tourist in Venice, searching for Joseph Brodsky's tomb; an excavator of her own artifacts, unpacking from a move. In essays that are as companionable as they are ambitious, she uses the city to exercise a roving, meandering intelligence, seeking out the questions embedded in our human landscapes.
"Starred Review. A collection that can't be categorized as memoir or travel writing or literary criticism but cohesively combines such elements and more." - Kirkus
"These essays take an unhurried pace well-suited for the ambling walks and bike rides that inspired them, deepened by literary and historical asides that situate these places in a context beyond the present moment." - Publisher's Weekly
"'A writer is a person who distributes silences and empty spaces.' What a pleasure to wander through Valeria Luiselli's meditative, precisely constructed landscapes of the city and interior. To read her essays is to have access to a map, a history, an passionate library, a thoughtful gaze, a sensitive and beautiful mind." - Kate Zambreno
"In a little over one hundred pages the peripatetic Luiselli covers Mexico City, Venice and New York – amongst others – with a quick eye and a scholar's heart. She is a keen excavator and expositor; the history of places, people, words and ideas are deftly woven together in brief tapestries of a life lived around the world." - Review 31
"Valeria Luiselli is a writer of formidable talent, destined to be an important voice in Latin American letters. Her vision and language are precise, and the power of her intellect is in evidence on every page." - Daniel Alarcón
This information about Sidewalks was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Diego Berruecos/Gatopardo
Valeria Luiselli is an acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of the essay collection Sidewalks; the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth; and, most recently, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and the international bestseller Lost Children Archive. She is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant," and the winner of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, an American Book Award, the Folio Prize, and the 2021 International Dublin Literary Award. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She lives in New York City.
Name Pronunciation
Valeria Luiselli: vuh-LAIR-ee-uh loo-SELL-ee
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