The Best People by Robert Lopez
Completing his celebrated novels-in-stories triptych, begun with Good People and A Better Class of People, Robert Lopez delivers the third installment, The Best People, which follows a man who made the mistake of being born and is trying to make the best of that mistake.
In an uncanny world where linear time is nonexistent and everyone he meets is either Esperanza, Sofia, or Manny, the unnamed narrator wrestles with his past lives, his abusive upbringing, his sexual proclivities, his obsession with cleanliness, and how to stop the world from breaking in.
With his signature unconventional storytelling and beguiling prose, Robert Lopez delivers a no-holds-barred, whiplash-fast polyphonic novel for the ages.
Publication Date: April 8, 2025
Paperback: 120 pages
ISBN: 9781938603242
Completing his celebrated novels-in-stories triptych, begun with Good People and A Better Class of People, Robert Lopez delivers the third installment, The Best People, which follows a man who made the mistake of being born and is trying to make the best of that mistake.
In an uncanny world where linear time is nonexistent and everyone he meets is either Esperanza, Sofia, or Manny, the unnamed narrator wrestles with his past lives, his abusive upbringing, his sexual proclivities, his obsession with cleanliness, and how to stop the world from breaking in.
With his signature unconventional storytelling and beguiling prose, Robert Lopez delivers a no-holds-barred, whiplash-fast polyphonic novel for the ages.
Publication Date: April 8, 2025
Paperback: 120 pages
ISBN: 9781938603242
Completing his celebrated novels-in-stories triptych, begun with Good People and A Better Class of People, Robert Lopez delivers the third installment, The Best People, which follows a man who made the mistake of being born and is trying to make the best of that mistake.
In an uncanny world where linear time is nonexistent and everyone he meets is either Esperanza, Sofia, or Manny, the unnamed narrator wrestles with his past lives, his abusive upbringing, his sexual proclivities, his obsession with cleanliness, and how to stop the world from breaking in.
With his signature unconventional storytelling and beguiling prose, Robert Lopez delivers a no-holds-barred, whiplash-fast polyphonic novel for the ages.
Publication Date: April 8, 2025
Paperback: 120 pages
ISBN: 9781938603242
PRAISE FOR THE BEST PEOPLE
"Every sentence—part Beckett, part Bernhard, and all singular Lopez—is a startle of rhythm and veer and comic sting haunted by shadows. Inhabited by the obsessed and the lopsided and the mischievously unpleasant, animated by the fierce disappointment at having been born, and even fiercer one at having to romance and age on a planet like this, Lopez’s novel-like object is the work of a virtuoso that proves again and again the best innovative fiction is still on fire in splendid, enlivening ways.”
—Lance Olsen, author of Absolute Away
“Bleak, biting, and so very funny, THE BEST PEOPLE is an inventive and utterly refreshing masterwork. As always, Lopez writes with precision, menace, blazing wit, and a relentless devotion to the absurdity of life.”
—Kimberly King Parsons, author ofWe Were the Universe
“The Best People made me feel a giddy sort of awe, both for the story it tells and for the way it is told. Lopez remains utterly and boldly wild on the page."
—Lindsay Hunter, author of Hot Springs Drive
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Lopez is the author of three novels, Part of the World, Kamby Bolongo Mean River —named one of 25 important books of the decade by HTML Giant, All Back Full, and two story collections, Asunder and Good People. A new book, A Better Class Of People, will be published by Dzanc Books in 2022. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has appeared in dozens of publications, including Bomb, The Threepenny Review, Vice Magazine, New England Review, The Sun, and the Norton Anthology of Sudden Fiction – Latino. He teaches at Pratt Institute and Stony Brook University. He was a fellow in fiction for the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2010 and Visiting Writer at Syracuse University for fall, 2018. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
