The Tortilla Curtain

Winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger 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.

T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of the novels A Friend of the Earth, Riven Rock, The Tortilla Curtain, The Road to Wellville, East Is East, World's End (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award), Budding Prospects, and Water Music. His short story collections include After the Plague, T.C. Boyle Stories, Descent of Man, Greasy Lake, If the River Was Whiskey, and Without a Hero. His short fiction regularly appears in major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, The Paris Review, Playboy, Esquire, and The Atlantic Monthly. Boyle was the recipient of the 1999 Pen/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. He lives near Santa Barbara, California. T. C. Boyle's Web site is www.tcboyle.com.