When I came to Mexico City in 1990, with limited knowledge of Spanish, I knew that I wanted to learn to the language well, and to be able to read anything from Don Quijote to One Hundred Years of Solitude in the original. But I never dreamed I would one day write in Spanish, let alone that a prestigious publishing house like Sexto Piso would consider my work worthy of a book. But here it is. Las llaves de la ciudad is a collection of pieces I wrote about Mexico City in the last few years, published in various magazines and newspapers here. The great majority of them are portraits of people: the proprietor of the first and only boutique in the world that sells nothing but bulletproof clothing; Alín, a deaf-mute transvestite who has invented her own sign language and sells her company in a beer joint; Viviana Corcuera, who was Miss Argentina in 1964, and for close to 40 years has been Mexico City's most notorious socialite. Each of these people is a stone in what, in the book's totality, becomes a mosaic of Mexico City.

For the moment it is only available in Mexico, at most major bookstores or if you click here. It will shortly be obtainable on Amazon; please watch the books page for its progress.