Obstacles Book

One of the most remarkable books of contemporary Mexican literature, The Obstacles is the story of young writers coming of age in a world dominated entirely by their own fictions. It tells, in alternating chapters, the stories of two teenagers, Ricardo and Elias, who are characters in each others' novels. Ricardo lives in Mexico City with his mother, who is mourning the recent death of her husband. Elias, an orphan, lives in Las Remoras, a town on the Baja Peninsula that has been invented and meticulously imagined by Ricardo. Blurring our notions of reality and fiction, Eloy Urroz takes the reader into a world where characters invent characters and challenge their creators. And the book's conclusion—in which a surprising connection between Ricardo and Elias is revealed—shows that not even fiction can be controlled in a world of such incredible unpredictability.