Valeria Luiselli wrote her first book, an essay collection entitled Sidewalks, about Mexico City’s streets, bookstores, people, history, ghost lakes, and forgotten rivers. It was a “love letter to the city,” in which she was born, she says. “I also wrote my PhD thesis about its architecture and literature—but that’s a less than entertaining read!” Her novel Beginning Middle End (Knopf), out this summer, features the same mother-and-daughter characters from her cross-country road-trip novel, Lost Children Archive (2019), this time traveling through Sicily during a summer of volcanic eruptions and tempestuous winds.
A political current runs through Luiselli’s work, which blends fiction and nonfiction, such as Mexican migration and the humanitarian crisis at the border. Her parents’ work for NGOs (her father was also a diplomat for a time) and a peripatetic childhood in Costa Rica, South Korea, South Africa, and India has informed her work. Here, the New York City Booker Prize nominee recommends her favorite places in Mexico’s capital.
Hotel: Gran Hotel Ciudad de México, if you like a little bit of decadence and a little bit of style. It’s a beautiful Art Nouveau building that used to be a department store and has been open since 1899.
Gran Hotel Mexico CityPhoto: John Bryson / Getty Images
Restaurants: (1) Tacos El Güero for reliable “street” food; (2) Páramo for a charming spot with delicious tacos de suadero; (3) Rosetta for a beautiful, quiet spot with a sophisticated array of Mexican and Mediterranean dishes by the amazing Elena Reygadas
For breakfast: Sanborns de los Azulejos for the place, and El Cherán in the Central de Abasto for a hungry morning of tacos de carnitas
Casa de los AzulejosPhoto: Geography Photos / Getty Images
