Help me find the title or author of my favorite lost half-read book!
June 30, 2015 1:50 AM Subscribe
I was so enthralled with it that I mentioned how wonderful it was to a visiting friend. He asked to borrow it, and then disappeared with it into the wild east of Estonia or maybe Moscow and I've never heard from him again. He also owes me two dollars.
But try as I might, I cannot remember either the author or title of the book. I remember key points : It was by a Spanish novelist. It was from the eighties or the early to mid nineties. Serious literature. One could read a touch of magic realism, but it was more aligned with metaphor as truth.
As far as I understood, it used the bubonic plague as a metaphor for the aids epidemic. It shifted effortlessly from birds having philosophical discussions to doctors wearing bird masks as they made futile curative gestures at the infirm. There were many short Arabian Nights style stories interwoven.
Perhaps one of the more memorable images--which was on the cover of the edition I had--was the figure of a giant Eris, a giant goddess of discord, trampling over the land with "boots of heavy gravity", dropping "celluloid dolls" which were somehow linked to the aids epidemic.
Help! I've never been able to get that book out of my mind.
But try as I might, I cannot remember either the author or title of the book. I remember key points : It was by a Spanish novelist. It was from the eighties or the early to mid nineties. Serious literature. One could read a touch of magic realism, but it was more aligned with metaphor as truth.
As far as I understood, it used the bubonic plague as a metaphor for the aids epidemic. It shifted effortlessly from birds having philosophical discussions to doctors wearing bird masks as they made futile curative gestures at the infirm. There were many short Arabian Nights style stories interwoven.
Perhaps one of the more memorable images--which was on the cover of the edition I had--was the figure of a giant Eris, a giant goddess of discord, trampling over the land with "boots of heavy gravity", dropping "celluloid dolls" which were somehow linked to the aids epidemic.
Help! I've never been able to get that book out of my mind.
Response by poster: Oh my god that is the magic book I will love you forever. Thank you thank you thank you.
posted by cytherea at 12:27 PM on September 5, 2015
posted by cytherea at 12:27 PM on September 5, 2015
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posted by misteraitch at 3:21 AM on June 30, 2015 [6 favorites]