“A wonderful contribution to the long tradition by which authors re-imagine their cities as dream-like spaces created for them to wander around, daydream and discover.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“Reminiscent of Sebald and Walser, unafraid of her own authority, Luiselli has produced an essay collection less heralded than many others this year and far better.”
—New York Magazine
“[Luiselli’s] subtexts become almost a guide—asides we might hear from the city itself, whispering to us as we walk of bicycle through it, speaking of its secrets.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“Luiselli’s writing is full of verve.”
—The Irish Times
“Illuminating and delightful.”
—Flavorwire
“Luiselli’s spare and probing essays touch on a variety of subjects and are unified by a capacious imagination.”
—SFGate
“[Faces in the Crowd and Sidewalks] have a combined weight that dwarfs the already considerable gravity they individually have.”
—KGB Bar
“For Luiselli, like Borges, the continuity between literature and reality is such that, if literature is a process of the imagination, then the world from which art is created is inseparably a part of that dream.”
—PANK
“To read Luiselli’s essays is to have access to a map, a history, an passionate library, a thoughtful gaze, a sensitive and beautiful mind.”
—Kate Zambreno
“[Luiselli] is a keen excavator and expositor; the history of places, people, words and ideas are deftly woven together in brief tapestries of a life lived around the world.”
—Review 31
“Valeria Luiselli is a writer of formidable talent, destined to be an important voice in Latin American letters. Her vision and language are precise, and the power of her intellect is in evidence on every page.”
—Daniel Alarcon
“Luiselli’s words (and Christina MacSweeney’s translation) seem to flow effortlessly across the page, and one could describe these glimpses into the author’s world as graceful prose poems or laments.”
—JacqueWine