Press
—The New York Times, “The Horrors of Immigration and the Pleasures of Food”
“Countries of Origin does what all memorable novels do: It leaves the reader’s world a little larger, airier and more forgiving than before.”
—Bloomberg, “Summer’s Best New Books Tackle War, Theft and Scandal on the Beach”
“Fuentes, a 2018 Lambda Literary Fellow, has come charging out of the gate with a cool, terse debut.”
—Publishers Weekly, “Writers to Watch in Spring 2023”
“Shelley Wanger, senior editor at Penguin Random House, compares the novel to André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, adding that “the story is so intense, seductive, unexpected.”
—Electric Lit, “The Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books for Summer 2023”
“Fuentes’s sensuous first novel centers on an undocumented pastry chef in Manhattan whose already liminal existence is thrown into further uncertainty when he’s forced to return to Spain…. what follows is an exquisite story of love—for another, for oneself, for home.”
This debut novel will heat up your summer with a sensual love story between two young men in Spain.
—La Vanguardia, Avance Editorial
“'Países de origen', de Javier Fuentes. El debut en la novela del barcelonés Javier Fuentes, publicado primero en inglés en Nueva York -con elogios de Colm Tóibín o Andrew Sean Greer.
“Fuentes’ first novel is a marvel of verisimilitude with a superbly realized setting and a perfectly apposite tone. His treatment of his complex, empathetic characters is psychologically acute, and their evolving relationship is believable and always engrossing. . . . a singularly successful debut.”
—Electric Lit, “A Queer Undocumented Chef Rebuilds His Life After Deportation”
Javier Fuentes wrote his novel "Countries of Origin" out of fear about being forced out of a country he loves.
–World Literature Today: “5 Questions by Michelle Johnson”
Javier Fuentes’s debut novel, Countries of Origin, finds pastry chef Demetrio leaving the US and returning to his birth country, Spain.
–Bomb Magazine, “Javier Fuentes interviewed by Crystal Hana Kim”
The debut novelist on writing an undocumented character, an enigmatic love affair between two men in Spain, and the hidden truths that emerge during the writing process.
–Lit Hub : 5 Writers, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers
In Conversation with Javier Fuentes, Derek Owusu, Jenny Xie and More.