I was born in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City, with four premature teeth and my body completely covered in a very fine coat of fuzz. But I'm grateful for that inauspicious start because ugliness, as my other uncle, Eurípides López Sánchez, was given to saying, is character forming. Highway is a late-in-life world traveler, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneer. His most precious possessions are the teeth of the "notorious infamous" like Plato, Petrarch, and Virginia Woolf. Written in collaboration with the workers at a Jumex juice factory, Teeth is an elegant, witty, exhilarating romp through the industrial suburbs of Mexico City and Luiselli's own literary influences.
"One of the most unforgettable images in any book this year is that of Gustavo Highway" Sánchez Sánchez, the protagonist of Luiselli's delightfully unclassifiable novel, walking around the streets of Mexico City, smiling at people with the teeth of Marilyn Monroe installed in his mouth . . . surprising and charming . . . It's difficult not to follow wherever it takes you."
Publishers Weekly, starred and boxed review
"A lively, loopy experimental novel rich with musings on language, art, and, yes, teeth. . .the whole book is a kind of extended commentary on how possessions acquire value largely through the stories we tell about them. . . A clever philosophical novel that, as the author puts it, has "less to do with lying than surpassing the truth."
Kirkus Starred Review
"Luiselli follows in the imaginative tradition of writers like Borges and Márquez, but her style and concerns are unmistakably her own. This deeply playful novel is about the passion and obsession of collecting, the nature of storytelling, the value of objects, and the complicated bonds of family. . . Luiselli has become a writer to watch, in part because it's truly hard to know (but exciting to w