If you're a fan of meta-fiction then do I have the translated rec for you! Valeria Luiselli is more well known for her latest novel Lost Children Archive, which she originally wrote in English. I loved that book and was thrilled when @thereadinggemini sent me a little translated fiction package, which included Luiselli's Faces in the Crowd, originally Los Ingrávidos in Spanish, translated by Christina MacSweeney.

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This little novel starts out with a woman, a wife and mother, living in Mexico City who is reflecting back on her time spent as a translator and editor in New York when she was younger. There, she became fixated on a forgotten Mexican poet, working during the Harlem Renaissance. The book is peppered with literary references, which will resonate more with other readers who are familiar with their works.

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As it was, I was fascinated by the narrative strands Luiselli deftly weaves, intertwines, and eventually blurs. What starts out as fairly straightforward slowly but surely becomes a dreamlike narrative, where the characters and authors fade in and out of one another's plotlines. Are they ghosts? Figments of the imagination? Characters in another novel? Luiselli really plays with structure, pushing boundaries to places I sometimes could not follow, but I was happy to be along for the ride.

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I definitely preferred the first half of the book, as the woman's job as a translator was obviously super interesting to me, and I loved all the bookish references. As I said I did get a little muddled as the different plotlines began to merge, but I was impressed overall.

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I'd recommend this one to fans of tiny books with a lot of complexity and power - but have your wits about you!