The Large Glass

In three separate autobiographies, celebrated Mexican innovator Mario Bellatin recounts his childhood trauma as a bathhouse spectacle, the treatment of an illness suffered by his Sufi spiritual mentor, and his complicated search for a quality second-hand Renault 5.

Bellatin has already delivered a laugh-out-loud satirical biography of a reclusive (and fictional) Japanese author with 2013's novel,Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction. Reversing the gaze, Bellatin now examines perhaps his most complicated, and least reliable, subject: himself.

Like the Duchamp sculpture from which it takes its name, Mario Bellatin's The Large Glass deconstructs the very form it embraces, revealing the artifice of the autobiographical genre, while celebrating - with wit and raunchy humor - the importance of the stories we tell about ourselves. Another entry in English that further solidifies Mario Bellatin as one of Latin America's most important living writers.

Mexican writer Mario Bellatin has published dozens of novels with major and minor publishing houses throughout Latin America, Europe, and the United States, includingShiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction and Jacob the Mutant, both from Phoneme Media. A practicing Sufi, Bellatin has won many international prizes, including, most recently, Cuba’s 2015 Jose Maria Arguedas Prize. He lives in Mexico City, Mexico.

David Shook's many translations include work by Mario Bellatin, Tedi Lopez Mills, and Victor Teran. His collection of poetry,Our Obsidian Tongues, was long-listed for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He lives in Los Angeles.