The Interior Circuit
A Mexico City Chronicle
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- € 12,99
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The Pulitzer Prize–finalist shares an intimate memoir of grieving his lost wife—and confronting the troubled Mexican city where she grew up.
Five years after his wife's untimely death, Francisco Goldman decided to overcome his fear of driving in Mexico City. The widower and award-winning writer wanted to fully embrace his late wife's childhood home and the city that came to mean so much to them. In The Interior Circuit, Goldman chronicles his personal and political awakening to the nuances of this unique city as he learns to navigate the "circuito interior," its crisscrossing network of highway-like roads.
Many regard Mexico's capital—then known as the "DF" or Distrito Federal—as a haven from the social ills that plague the rest of the country. Goldman's account reveals a more complicated truth as he explores the effects of Mexico's raging narco war, the resurgence of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (the PRI), and new eruptions of organized crime-related violence.
Part travelogue, part memoir, and part political reportage, The Interior Circuit "is so sneakily brilliant it's hard to put into words. . . . It is also, in the finest sense, a book that creates its own form" (Los Angeles Times).
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In this exquisite chronicle, novelist and journalist Goldman (Say Her Name) takes readers into the heart of Mexico City, showcasing its vibrant complexity and grit. Grieving for his young wife Aura's death five years earlier, Goldman explores his relationship with her native city against the backdrop of its changing leadership a result of the 2012 presidential elections that restored the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to power after a 12-year absence. As Goldman notes, the Districto Federal (D.F.), as Mexico City is commonly known, mainly avoided the "catastrophe of the murderous narco war" because of the progressive leadership of mayors from the left-leaning opposing party, the PRD. Now with the PRI and its ominous ties to the drug cartels back in power, not even the D.F. seems immune to kidnappings and escalating violence. A perceptive, funny, and philosophical narrator, Goldman investigates the kidnappings of 12 youths in broad daylight; traces the evolution of a student movement, #YoSoy132, formed to protest the candidacy and eventual election of presidential candidate Pe a Nieto; overcomes his fear of driving in a megacity of 22 million; and ponders the differences between Mexico and the U.S. in their approaches to culture, friendship, and grief. Throughout this remarkable book, Goldman is highly attuned to the pulse and rhythm of one of the world's most captivating cities.
