Tijuana: Stories on the Border

Tijuana is a haunting collection of stories and a novella, all set in the shadowy borderlands between Mexico and the United States. A fresh and evocative voice, Federico Campbell traces many kinds of borders—geographical, psychological, cultural, spiritual—and the "halfway beings" that inhabit them.

The novella, "Everything About Seals," is both a passionate love story and a deeply disquieting chronicle of romantic obsession. The narrative voices in Campbell's stories are many-sided, moving from the brash teenager whose gang's symbol is the Mobil Oil flying horse to the confused law student who no longer knows whether his cultural allegiance is to Mexico City or to Los Angeles.

Campbell has captured here the ambivalent, fascinating ties between Mexico and the U.S., ties ranging from Hollywood movies to Mexican folklore. The first English-language translation of his work, Tijuana will be welcomed by general readers as well as literary critics, anthropologists, historians, and those interested in the culture of the border.