Book cover of Gringos

Book description

A truly brilliant, wonderfully bizarre novel by one of our great American novelists, the author of the perennial bestseller True Grit

Jimmy Burns is an expatriate American living in Mexico who has an uncommonly astute eye for the absurd little details that comprise your average American.

For a time, Jimmy…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Gringos as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Charles Portis is revered by an ever-increasing number of readers as a comic genius, best known for his novel True Grit. In Gringos, a cranky American expat named Jimmy Burns occasionally traffics in purloined pre-Columbian artifacts he finds in and around the Yucatán Peninsula. Since this is Charles Portis writing, the story of Jimmy Burn’s Mexican adventures is interrupted by numerous digressions, a slow-moving but always entertaining storyline, and an introduction to characters no less quirky than the man himself. 

Any recommendation of Portis's novels can't quite describe the low-key lunacy and understated humor of his work. "Deadpan"…

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It’s 1985, and Ronald Armstrong, known in the magic mushroom trade as “Trip,” takes a “sober” job as a driver for a retired Tampa mobster. His boss, Charlie Wall, has survived four attempts on his life, the last one in 1955. When Charlie falls into depression, Trip rebuilds his boss’…

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