When Delaney Mossbacher knocks down a Mexican pedestrian, he
neither reports the accident nor takes his victim to hospital.
Instead the man accepts $20 and limps back to poverty and his
pregnant 17-year-old wife, leaving Delaney to return to his
privileged life in California. But these two men are fated against
each other, as Delaney attempts to clear the land of the illegal
immigrants who he thinks are turning his state park into a ghetto,
and a boiling pot of racism and prejudice threatens to spill over.
'This novel examines America's guerrilla war between the haves and have-nots with a zing unequalled since The Bonfire of the Vanities' Observer 'A harrowing, even horrific, tale of an immigrant couple's venture into California, and the shockingly brutal reception they receive ... a remarkable feat of imaginative empathy' Daily Telegraph 'Thrilling ... it's the same set up as Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities but Boyle immediately enlivens it' Independent on Sunday 'A powerful novel ... One of the best books I've read this year' Marie Claire
T. C. Boyle's novels include World's End, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, The Tortilla Curtain, the New York Times bestseller, The Women and, most recently, When the Killing's Done. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages and he is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in California.
