The Tortilla Curtain
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3.7 • 6 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
T.C. Boyle’s “irresistible” (Entertainment Weekly) classic bestseller, a tragicomic novel about assimilation, immigration, and the price of the American dream
“A masterpiece of contemporary social satire.” —The Wall Street Journal
WINNER OF THE PRIX MÉDICIS ÉTRANGER
Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Undocumented immigrants Cándido and América Rincón desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine. And from the moment a freak accident brings Cándido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a dramatic comedy of error and prejudice.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The American Dream gets brilliantly skewered in T. C. Boyle’s razor-sharp satire about the haves and have-nots. Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher’s affluent Los Angeles neighborhood is gated—to keep out people like Cándido and América Rincón, a married couple living in poverty on the edge of society. But when Delaney accidentally injures Cándido, the privileged and downtrodden couples’ worlds begin to intersect in ways none of them expected…or wanted. With one personal and cultural misunderstanding after another pushing all the characters toward disaster, resentments fester on both sides and the pressure mounts. Boyle takes a fearless look at prejudice and racism, making his novel as timely now as it was when it was originally published in 1995. This wickedly dark satire is daring and subversive, a West Coast version of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Boyle's latest concerns two couples in Southern California--one a pair of wealthy suburbanites, the other illegal immigrants from Mexico.
