Travels with a Mexican Circus

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'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
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The delightfully beguiling account of novelist Katie Hickman's adventures with a Mexican circus
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.
Travels with a Mexican Circus is an unforgettable account of a year-long journey through an extraordinary and bizarrely beautiful country.
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'A delight... The stories of the cirqueros themselves read like tales by Gabriel Garcia Marquez' - Harpers & Queen
'The most ambitiously imaginative sort of travel writing' - Patrick Skene Catling

Katie Hickman is the author of six previous books, including two bestselling history books, Courtesans and Daughters of Britannia. She has written two travel books: Travels with a Circus, about her experiences travelling with a Mexican circus, which was shortlisted for the 1993 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, and Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon, about a journey on horseback through the forbidden Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. She was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year award for her novel The Quetzal Summer. Katie Hickman lives in London with her two children and her husband, the philosopher A.C. Grayling.