The Obscene Bird of Night: Unabridged, Centennial Edition
Description
Deep in a maze of musty, forgotten hallways, Mudito rummages through piles of old newspapers. The mute caretaker of the crumbling former abbey, he is hounded by a coven of ancient witches who are bent on transforming him, bit by bit, into the terrifying imbunche: a twisted monster with all of its orifices sewn up, buried alive in its own body. Once, Mudito walked upright and spoke clearly; once he was the personal assistant to one of Chile's most powerful politicians, Jerónimo de Azcoitía. Once, he ruled over a palace of monsters, built to shield Jeronimo's deformed son from any concept of beauty. Once, he plotted with the wise woman Peta Ponce to bed Inés, Jerónimo's wife. Mudito was Humberto, Jerónimo was strong, Inés was beautiful--once upon a time... Narrated in voices that shift and multiply, The Obscene Bird of Night frets the seams between master and slave, rich and poor, reality and nightmares, man and woman, self and other in a maniacal inquiry into the horrifying transformations that power can wreak on identity.
Now, star translator Megan McDowell has revised and updated the classic translation, restoring nearly twenty pages of previously untranslated text that was mysteriously cut from the 1972 edition. Newly complete, with missing motifs restored, plots deepened, and characters more richly shaded, Donoso's pajarito (little bird), as he called it, returns to print to celebrate the centennial of its author's birth in full plumage, as brilliant as it is bizarre.
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About the Author
One of the great Boom writers, José Donoso (1924-1996) wrote novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry. He worked stints as a shepherd in Patagonia and a stevedore in Buenos Aires before studying at Princeton and teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He was twice a Guggenheim Fellow and won the William Faulkner Foundation Prize as well as Chile's highest literary honor, the National Literature Prize, among many other awards.
Reviews
Donoso, as I have long believed, belongs to that small company of storytellers who write not for a region but for the entire world: a gigantic masterpiece.--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
It would be a crass understatement to say that this book is a challenging read; it's totally and unapologetically psychotic. It's also insanely gothic, brilliantly engaging, exquisitely written, filthy, sick, terrifying, supremely perplexing, and somehow connives to make the brave reader feel like a tiny, sleeping gnat being sucked down a fabulously kaleidoscopic dream plughole.--Nicola Barker "The Guardian"
Donoso has learned to multiply by myth and this gives his work a resonance and amplitude that puts him alongside Carpentier, Cortázar and Garcia Marquez.--Paul West "The Washington Post Book World"
To say he's the best Chilean novelist of the century is to insult him. I don't think Donoso had such paltry ambitions.--Roberto Bolaño
Donoso is one of the most important contemporary Spanish-language writers. ... He gave the novel a very personal touch, distancing it from traditionally regionalist, realistic Latin American literature, he greatly modernized it. This was thanks, on the one hand, to a very broad literary education, to his knowledge of English literature, which he preferred, and also to his drawing from an inner life that was original, rich, with great imagery and originality, a world constructed in his image and semblance and into which he poured his manias, his fantasies, his most secret ghosts, which was furthermore constructed with great skill, with deep technical knowledge of the resources of modern literature.--Mario Vargas Llosa
With this book Donoso becomes a world novelist.-- "Newsweek"
The story line is like a great puzzle invested with a vibrant, almost tangible reality.-- "The New York Times"
A challenging but wonderfully strange read.--NoViolet Bulawayo
Yes, a miracle, a climactic act of magic for a book that is itself both Miracle and Monster, like the best of this century's American fiction. I have no idea what fate awaits it, but it certainly deserves to take its place alongside the major works of Asturias and Fuentes, Cortazar, Burges and Rulfo, Vargas Llosa and Garcia Marquez, and never mind that 'the old woman plotted everything.' She and 'The Obscene Bird of Night' are part of our mainstream, after all, Anglo- and Hispano-American alike. The horrible bat-winged head of the beautiful Blessed Ines pursues us all.--Robert Coover "The New York Times"
Donoso must be counted as one of the spinal writers of the extraordinary boom in Latin-American fiction which spread through the reading world from the mid-sixties on.--Alastair Reed "The New Yorker"
Jose Donoso is my favorite author of the Latin American boom (better than Gabriel Garcia Márquez).--Fernanda Melchor
