The Ensenada Public Library

"The Ensenada Public Library is a book about books--burned, lost, waterlogged, treasured, shelved, hoarded, contraband. The library's ordered world of ink and paper is set in vivid contrast to the Sea of Cortez's blowing sand and seawater, high cliffs, tequila and lime juice, the slap of wave against surfboard. David Bajo's taut, gorgeous prose is suffused with a lush nostalgia that shades into futuristic foreboding, a story within the story that contains a deft warning. This is a startlingly original, beautiful novel."--Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man and The Last Cruise

A surreal and haunting elegy on the printed book, The Ensenada Public Library tunnels deep into the psychology of reading, unfurling stories within stories--burned and fragmented, erased and reconstructed, imbibed with tea in the depths of apocalyptic caves. Bajo's dazzling meditation on the uncanny power of the written word is a must-read for book lovers in the digital age.--Julia Liz Elliott, author of The New and Improved Romie Futch and The Wilds

Like its namesake, Ensenada Public Library is redolent with the rumor of many books: one catches hints of Calvino, of Russell Hoban, of Ray Bradbury mingling in its restless airs. But in its border-country wonder and melancholy, with smoky colonias and sounding whales on the horizon, it casts a spell all its own. David Bajo's novel is a nocturne, lit with showers of furnace sparks and moonlight on the breaking waves--or are those pages turning? David Bajo's librarians, in their yearning and resolve, know that even as the book of the world nears its final pages the story is still being written, the ink never dry.--Matthew Battles, author of Library: An Unquiet History and The Sovereignties of Invention