Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico

By: Juan Villoro

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Synopsis: At once intimate and wide-ranging, and as enthralling, surprising, and vivid as the place itself, this is a uniquely eye-opening tour of one of the great metropolises of the world, and its largest Spanish-speaking city. Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flaneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them. In so doing he reveals, in all its multitudinous glory, the vicissitudes and triumphs of the city &’s cultural, political, and social history: from indigenous antiquity to the Aztec period, from the Spanish conquest to Mexico City today—one of the world&’s leading cultural and financial centers. In this deeply iconoclastic book, Villoro organizes his text around a recurring series of topics: &“Living in the City,&” &“City Characters,&” &“Shocks,&” &“Crossings,&” and &“Ceremonies.&” What he achieves, miraculously, is a stunning, intriguingly coherent meditation on Mexico City&’s genius loci, its spirit of place.