"I'm so enthralled by the book that one night, when Borges came over, I proposed we read the only story I hadn't read yet: "The Novices of Lerna." We were dazzled. The story is admirably told, with much wisdom, everything is spot on, from the pleasantly calm tone to the description and ambience of the setting."—letter from Adolfo Bioy Casares to Ángel Bonomini, September 18, 1972
"Bonomini’s imagination has a watercolor lightness that sets him apart from his contemporaries."—Natasha Wimmer, The New York Review of Books
"These surreal stories reckon with identity, perception, and existence... A beguiling blend of the cerebral and the visceral."—Kirkus Reviews
"[Bonomini] makes a noteworthy English-language debut with this entrancing collection."—Publishers Weekly
“A ghost of a book that haunts and perplexes, enticing each reader in with its mastery of language and craft.”—Asymptote
"Bonomini's fantastic collection [allows] the worlds of his stories to slither out and off the page, offer forbidden fruit, and shoot readers into a fallen and forgotten world where the real is absurd and the absurd is really the most true thing on offer."—The Rumpus
"A compelling balance of heady high concepts with pulp thrills...a welcome addition to Argentinian literature in translation—and to Weird fiction the world over."—Tobias Carroll, Reactor
"...the mirror house of Bonomini’s collection throws up a multiplicity of reflections—not always flattering, but always revelatory."—Ancillary Review of Books
2024-04-18
These surreal stories reckon with identity, perception, and existence.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1929, Bonomini—a contemporary of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, and Jorge Luis Borges—has never been translated into English before. Much like his peers, Bonomini reckoned with both grand philosophical questions and the foibles of individual behavior. The title novella, which takes up much of this volume, focuses on an academic summoned to a strange institute of higher learning where all his fellow scholars—though hailing from different nations—look exactly alike. The men are given a series of rules that seem designed to further eradicate their individual identities, and by the time an epidemic begins thinning their ranks, it’s not clear if it’s an ironic coincidence or part of some plan. In the stories that follow, there’s a similar ambiguity, sometimes elevated to a metafictional level. After “The Model” appears to end, the story’s narrator chimes in to tell readers, “I have only been truthful about one thing.” The identities of characters in “The Bengal Tiger,” which opens with a series of potentially unrelated sentences about a woman and a tiger, blur as the story continues, eventually transforming the narrative into a dreamlike triangle in which a man, a woman, and a tiger alternate roles of love, death, and betrayal. In “Aromatic Herbs,” the narrator moves the story in and out of dreams, including one that ends with his own death. These tales are often heady, abounding with unlikely revelations and sudden moments of violence. Their arrival in English, translated by Landsman, is a welcome development.
A beguiling blend of the cerebral and the visceral.