The Tortilla Curtain [Paperback]

T.C. Boyle’s tragicomic, award-winning novel about assimilation, immigration, and the price of the American dream
 
“A masterpiece of contemporary social satire . . . Turning the collective face of Mexican immigration into one ordinary human being, and walking many bruising miles in Candido’s cheap shoes, is Mr. Boyle’s gift to our collective conscience. But what makesThe Tortilla Curtaingood reading for any political stripe is that the author neither romanticizes the newcomers nor demonizes those who would pull up the ladder behind them.”—The Wall Street Journal

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. Mexican illegals Candido and America Rincon 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 Candido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy of error and misunderstanding.Winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger

“A compelling story of myopic misunderstanding and mutual tragedy.”
—Chicago Tribune

“Succeeds in stealing the front page news and bringing it home to the great American tradition of the social novel . . . A book to appreciate as we peer at the faces of strangers outside our windows, and wall ourselves in.”
—The Boston Globe

“Lays on the line our national cult of hypocrisy. Comically and painfully he details the smug wastefulness of the haves and the vile misery of the have-nots.”
—Barbara Kingsolver,The Nation

“Boyle’s writing is irresistilóå