Juan Pablo Villalobos

The Past Pursues Us Like Detectives, Debt Collectors, Thieves

After many peaceful years abroad, JP has returned home to Mexico to visit family and help care for his elderly mother. Instead, however, he finds himself at a bar, his fist inches from the face of Everardo, his sort-of childhood friend. He lands the blow and runs home. But when Everardo turns up dead the next morning, JP soon finds himself blamed for a murder that he (probably) didn’t commit. What’s going on? Can Lagos really be more full of drugs, extortion, and fraud than when he left? Why is everyone offering him pills? How’s he ever going to pay for his mother’s medical treatment? It wasn’t even that good a punch!

Weaving outright hilarity with wry tenderness, The Past Pursues Us is a fast-paced and funny whodunit that lovingly speaks to the stories we tell ourselves about home: about what changes, what doesn’t, and what should.

Read an Excerpt
EBook: £11.99
Paperback UK (Bookshop.org)
Paperback US (Bookshop.org)

More Info

Original language: Spanish
Format: B format paperback
Publication date: 21 July 2026
ISBN: 9781916751453
Ebook ISBN: 9781916751460

Reviews

Kit Maude
Times Literary Supplement

‘A rambunctious picaresque of contemporary Mexican life, rendered into English by [Daniel] Hahn with appropriate energy.’

Andrés Ordorica
The Skinny

‘Juan Pablo Villalobos, in a translation by Daniel Hahn, demonstrates his classic wit and penchant for the absurd, blurring the lines of genre and protagonist with its author.’

Chris Allnutt
Financial Times

‘Vividly drawn, darkly amusing and never dull.’

Nicolás Giacobone, screenwriter of Birdman

The Past Pursues Us is a masterful example of how to push autobiography to the extremes of fiction, allowing the imagination to explore themes rooted in the author’s life. Themes that, when taken to their limits, reveal a sharp glimpse of an inexorable truth.’