
Larva
A Midsummer Night's Babel
Julian Rios(Author)
Suzanne Jill Levine(Co-Author)
Dalkey Archive Press
Will be published approx. on 13. December 1990
Book
Paperback/Softback
545 pages
978-1-56478-368-4 (ISBN)
Description
A striking reassessment of the Don Juan myth. A literary tour de force, this extraordinary novel is told in single-minded pursuit of double meanings, but it is serious play. Larva is a rollicking account of a masquerade party in an abandoned mansion in London. Milalias (disguised as Don Juan) searches for Babelle (as Sleeping Beauty) through a linguistic funhouse of puns and wordplay recalling Joyce's Finnegans Wake. A mock-scholarly commentary reveals the backgrounds of the masked revellers, while Rios' allusive language shows that words too wear masks, hiding an astonishing range of further meanings and implications. Larva revives a Hispanic tradition repressed for centuries by introducing the English tradition of puns, palindromes and acrostics (a word puzzle in which certain letters in each line form a word or words) and establishes Rios as the most accomplished successor (in any language) to Joyce.
Reviews / Votes
"Larva is a great novel of language. This adventure in the Spanish language easily translates into English because the creative urge is the same in both, and because Rios is the most cosmopolitan of contemporary writers."--Carlos FuentesMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Normal, IL
United States
Product notice
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 139 mm
Thickness: 42 mm
Weight
703 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-56478-368-4 (9781564783684)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Julia?n Ri?os is Spain's foremost post- modernist writer. After co-authoring two books with Octavio Paz, Ri?os went on to write numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including "Larva, Poundemonium, Loves That Bind", and "Monstruary", all of which have been published in English translation. He lives in Paris. Having translated Manuel Puig, Julio Cortazar, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and other notable authors, Suzanne Jill Levine is one of the most highly regarded translators of contemporary Latin American literature. She is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the author of The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction.