Tropic of Orange
A novel by Karen Tei Yamashita

"A big talent." - The Los Angeles Times

Uniquely combining magical realism, film noir, hip hop and chicanismo, Karen Yamashita presents an LA where the homeless, gangsters, infant organ entrepreneurs, and Hollywood collide on a stretch of highway struck by disasters. The Harbor Freeway Crisis becomes the apex of events - caused by an orange, which has been brought to LA from just north of Mazatlan, dragging with it the Tropic of Cancer.

Rafaela, caretaking Gabriel’s getaway home in Mexico, discovers a dealer of human body parts and flees north, joining a performer/laborer named Arcangel. Meanwhile, Gabriel, a news reporter in LA, has been following leads in which seemingly unrelated events mysteriously unite as the homeless take up residence in abandoned Mercedes, low riders, and Cads, while an aged Asian American sensei conducts symphonies from a freeway overpass.

Buzzworm, Gabriel’s connection to the streets, along with his girlfriend and television executive, Emi, gets caught in the middle of the mounting wildfire just as the cast of characters - diverse as the city itself - assembles for the final event. Tropic of Orange is an apocalypse of race, class, and culture, fanned by the media under the harsh LA sun.

Karen Tei Yamashita is author of Brazil-Maru, one of the Village Voice 25 Best Books of the Year; and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, winner of the American Book Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Award.

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