The People of Paper - Tapa dura

'A stunning debut by a once-in-a-generation talent. I don't know of a young American writer more original, innovative or intense than Salvador Plascencia. "The People of Paper" is harrowing and gorgeous, experimental in the truest sense: it creates new means to explore essential and timeless emotional subjects. George Saunders 'Salvador Plascencia weaves together the daily life details of this world and the big ideas surrounding them to a stirring end effect. "The People of Paper" is a terrifically original debut.' Aimee Bender '"The People of Paper" is a novel like no other, emerging from the chrysalis of magic and imagination to create a world of letters that seeps back into the world we know and then metamorphoses into something else altogether. Calvino, Borges and Garcia Marquez will come to mind, but Plascencia's novel is a creature of its own, firmly grounded and soaring at the same time.' T. C. Boyle

Amidst disillusioned saints hiding in wrestling rings, mothers burnt by glowing halos, and a Baby Nostradamus who sees only blackness, a gang of flower pickers heads off to war, led by a lonely man who cannot help but wet his bed in sadness. Part memoir, part lies, this is a book about the wounds inflicted by first love and sharp objects.