National Book Award for Translated Literature
Comemadre
This short novel links a 1907 story of grotesque experiments on the boundary between life and death at a sanatorium outside Buenos Aires with a 2009 story of an artist trying to turn his own body into art. Science, art, desire, and faith in progress converge in darkly comic form.
Work Information
The boundaries between life and death, art and the body, collapse with comedy and discomfort.
Roque Larraquy's Comemadre, translated by Heather Cleary and published in English by Coffee House Press, is an Argentine novel in two linked movements. A young doctor is drawn into experiments and a desire for the head nurse, while a later artist pursues self-transformation as aesthetic destiny. The book becomes a deliberately unsettling fable about how far people will damage themselves and others in the name of transcendence or progress.
Review Summaries
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The novel is valued for its strange premise and for linking two eras within a compact frame. Its mix of cruelty, comedy, and philosophical questioning can divide readers, but it gives the book a forcefully distinctive identity.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Coffee House Press
- Published
- 2018-07-10
- Pages
- 152 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 12.7 x 1.27 x 19.69 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781566895156
- ISBN-10
- 1566895154
- Price
- 3019 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/United States/Hispanic
Literary Latin American Flatliners : a smart, engrossing, and darkly funny novel experimenting with where life and love begin and end. On the outskirts of Buenos Aires in 1907, Doctor Quintana pines for head nurse Menéndez while he and his colleagues embark on a grisly series of experiments to investigate the line between life and death. One hundred years later, a celebrated artist goes to extremes in search of aesthetic transformation, turning himself into an art object. How far are we willing to go, Larraquy asks, in pursuit of transcendence? The world of Comemadre is full of vulgarity, excess, and farce: strange ants that form almost perfect circles, missing body parts, obsessive love affairs, and flesh-eating plants. Here the monstrous is not alien, but the consequence of our relentless pursuit of collective and personal progress.
Roque Larraquy is an Argentinian writer, screenwriter, professor of narrative and audiovisual design, and the author of two books, La comemadre and Informe sobre ectoplasma animal . Comemadre will be his first book published in English. Heather Cleary’s translations include César Rendueles’s Sociophobia , Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets and The Dark , and a selection of Oliverio Girondo’s poetry for New Directions.
Reviews
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Chilling weird fiction!
I know translation has a lot to do with how well written a foreign language book turns out in English so kudos to the translator as well as the author of this gem. It’s an unusual read, in two parts, taking place in very different time periods. The first part was my favorite. The second was a little too over my head (I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the author meant) but the beautiful prose was mesmerizing. Without spoiling it, I’ll just say that the first part involved some of the creepiest medical science I’ve ever read presented in such a way that the little hairs on the back of my neck often stood up while reading it. The characters were sublimely presented, each with their own secrets, and their true intentions slowly revealed in lyrical style. Loved the gorgeous writing! Did I mention the beautiful prose? Am now obsessed with this author and searching desperately for more of his novels in English! Super! Fantastico!
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Dessication
A plant that is filled with larvae that will disappear anything organic, but not in less than nine seconds. A character in this book definitely considered the actual time required to consume...
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This book is not landing in 2025 the same way it would have 20 years ago.
Reality has overtaken satire: if I want to read about a bunch of self-obsessed incel sociopaths treating other people worse than animals, I can just turn on the news. It's true that so far, the news doesn't feature so many decapitations, but maybe that will be coming soon?
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It Doesn't Matter What Label You Use
This book is fantastic. Very imaginative, extremely funny (but you need a perverse sense of humor) and very reader friendly thanks to Ms. Cleary's flowing translation. It's also philosophically thought provoking and short. 129 pages. Oh, don't worry. You get your money's worth. Along with fellow Argentinians Fresan and Saccomanno, Larraquy is now on the radar for us gringos.
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Good book.
It’s a fun read. Great novel. Ridiculous characters. Kinda dark but enjoyable.