Travels with a Mexican Circus

'A wonderful writer … An adventure hard to beat in terms of sheer exotic allure' - Guardian
'Mexico will not have been portrayed more vividly since Graham Greene's The Lawless Roads ... Enchanting' - Daily Telegraph
'Magic is at the heart of Hickman's narrative, not just in the fabulous illusions of the acts themselves or the superstitions of the circus people, but in the fantastic stories of the characters she presents' - Sunday Times

Katie Hickman went to Mexico looking for magic. She found it in the circus – Big Top, clowns, elephants and all – where cheap, torn materials and tarnished sequins are transformed into nights of glittering illusion. Gradually adjusting to the harsh ways of the circus's nomadic lifestyle, she soon became absorbed into this hypnotic new world, at first as a foreigner but later as 'La Gringa Estrella', a performer in her own right.

This delightfully beguiling account follows an unforgettable year-long journey through an extraordinary and bizarrely beautiful country, offering the most ambitiously imaginative sort of travel writing. The stories of the cirqueros themselves read like tales by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – a world where reality and enchantment become inseparable under the big top.