HOME READING SERVICE

By Fabio Morábito

Other Press, 2021

Winner of the Pen America Foundation’s Pen/Heim Translation Fund Grant 2020

Winner of the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia 2019

Winner of the Prix Roger Caillois 2019

“First, the tempting promise of an almost existential discovery, then bewilderment, subtle humor, and then everything in this story that seemed small and simple strikes back with extraordinary resonance. What a pleasure it always is to read Morábito.”
—Samanta Schweblin, author of Fever Dream and Mouthful of Birds 

“A wonderful addition to the literature of the picaresque, this vivid, original novel depicts the transformative power of literature within a society wrestling with its own social and political mutations.”
—Chloe Aridjis, author of Sea Monsters 

“I have always considered Morábito’s work my main school of writing. Here, his precise, understated but always satisfying prose is preserved in Bauer’s translation. Home Reading Service has contemporary violence as mere backdrop, and instead gives center stage to the suddenly rarefied acts of reading, of sharing, of paying—or not paying—attention. We are led through a series of quirky households and get to meet the unique underdogs who call them home. A humorous novel that entertains without ever giving up on poetry. A book with soul, despite all the swimming pools.”
—Laia Jufresa, author of Umami

“In the tradition of the wittiest and wisest Mexican storytellers such as Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Juan Villoro, and Juan Pablo Villalobos, Fabio Morábito has written a fable about contemporary Mexico that is both hilariously entertaining and soberingly profound. Home Reading Service reads both as a beguiling page-turner and a tender and compassionate elegy about the social unraveling of a country devastated by corruption, organized crime, and collective solitude. Weeks after finishing this slim but muscular novel, I’m still haunted by it.”
—Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, author of Barefoot Dogs 

“I don’t think you can be a writer of this generation without rolling around in the work of Morábito, who taught us that writing is about playing with sounds. That is what happens in this novel, in which a home reader plays with the different ways of listening of seven families and stumbles between the healing power of words and the passion for literature, while serving a sentence and transforming his life.”
—Emiliano Monge, author of Among the Lost and The Arid Sky

“The fascinating story of a man lost in his own thoughts who nevertheless transforms the lives of the people he interacts with. A great novel.”
—Sin Embargo

“[A] magnificent novel…Morábito uncovers mysteries of everyday life.”
—Criterio Hidalgo

“[Home Reading Service is] finely constructed, with a joyful and joyfully whimsical melancholy.”
—Libération