Juan Pablo Villalobos' latest novel, The Past Is Behind Us (Anagrama, 2024), is a story between fiction and confessional. The writer left Mexico 20 years ago to settle in Barcelona, where he makes a living writing.

His return to his hometown, Lagos de Moreno, triggers a series of circumstances that are the fruit of nothing more than your imagination... or not. “Any resemblance to reality is not a mere coincidence, this is how fiction works,” the Jalisco native (51 years old) warns on the first page.