The Tortilla Curtain - Softcover

Winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger

"A compelling story of myopic misunderstanding and mutual tragedy."
--Chicago Tribune

"Succeeds in stealing the front page news and bringing it home to the great American tradition of the social novel . . . A book to appreciate as we peer at the faces of strangers outside our windows, and wall ourselves in."
--The Boston Globe

"Lays on the line our national cult of hypocrisy. Comically and painfully he details the smug wastefulness of the haves and the vile misery of the have-nots."
--Barbara Kingsolver, The Nation

"Boyle's writing is irresistible and his sense of dramatic timing is impeccable."
--Entertainment Weekly

"America's most imaginative contemporary novelist."
--Newsweek

"It says a lot about T. Coraghessan Boyle's new novel that so many generations of great satirists come to mind when reading it--from Swift to Twain to Waugh to Woody Allen, Boyle specifically evokes Voltaire."
--The Baltimore Sun

"Weaving social commentary into moving entertaining fiction is a job few writers can handle. Boyle does so here, admirably. Readers should not miss this latest work from an impressive talent."
--St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Boyle's sixth novel cements his place among the reigning pantheon of contemporary American fiction writers. (It's one heck of a great read.)"
--Rocky Mountain News

"A panoramic slice of social realism . . . [that] incorporates all of Boyle's themes: the impossibility of assimilation, the need for control, the increasing helplessness of white males."
--Vogue

"A tale that squeezes one last cup of vinegar from The Grapes of Wrath."
--Portland Oregonian

While leading their lives in their gated hilltop community in Los Angeles, Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher accidently meet Mexican illegal aliens Ca+a7ndido and Ame+a7rica Rinco+a7n, and their encounter brings them together in a relationship of error and misunderstanding. Reprint.