4 books by José Donoso
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Overview: José Donoso Yáñez was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent some years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and Spain. After 1973, he claimed his exile was a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom and the foundation of the literary movement knows as Magical Realism. His best known works include the novels Coronación, El lugar sin límites (The Place Without Limits) and El obsceno pájaro de la noche (The Obscene Bird of Night). His works deal with a number of themes, including sexuality and psychology, and are often darkly humorous. He is also considered an innovative stylist.
Genre: Contemporary Fiction | Psychological Thriller | Horror
The Obscene Bird of Night
This haunting jungle of a novel has been hailed as “a masterpiece” by Luis Bunuel and “one of the great novels not only of Spanish America, but of our time” by Carlos Fuentes. The story of the last member of the aristocratic Azcoitia family, a monstrous mutation protected from the knowledge of his deformity by being surrounded with other freaks as companions, The Obscene Bird of Night is a triumph of imaginative, visionary writing. Its luxuriance, fecundity, horror, and energy will not soon fade from the reader’s mind.
The story is like a great puzzle . . . invested with a vibrant, almost tangible reality.
—The New York Times
Although many of the other “boom” writers may have received more attention—especially Fuentes and Vargas Llosa—Donoso and his masterpiece may be the most lasting, visionary, strangest of the books from this time period. Seriously, it’s a novel about the last member of an aristocratic family, a monstrous mutant, who is surrounded by other freaks so as to not feel out of place.
—Publishers Weekly
Nicola Barker has said:
"I’m no expert on the topic of South American literature (in fact I’m a dunce), but I have reason to believe (after diligently scouring the internet) that Chile’s Jose Donoso, while a very highly regarded author on home turf, is little known on this side of the Atlantic. His masterpiece is the fabulously entitled The Obscene Bird of Night. 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."
The Garden Next Door
A Chilean writer named Julio and his wife Gloria are beset by worries, constantly bickering about money, their writing, and their son (who may or may not be plying the oldest trade in Marrakesh). When Julio’s boyhood best friend, now a famous artist, lends the couple his luxurious Madrid apartment for the summer, it is an escape for both — in particular for Julio, who fantasizes about the garden next door and the erotic life of the lovely young aristocrat who inhabits it. But Julio’s life and career unravel in Madrid: he is rebuffed by a famous literary agent, who detests him and his novel; his son’s friend from Marrakesh moves in and causes havoc; and Gloria begins to drink. In the face of pitiless adversity, Julio’s talent inexorably begins to fade. With The Garden Next Door, Jose Donoso has rendered a carefully crafted and bitterly comic meditation on gardens, deceit, and the nature of a writer’s muse.
Coronation
Grotesque yet realistic at the same time, this first novel from the most famous Chilean narrator from the end of the last century, exposes the themes that will mark his future works: deterioration of society, identity questions, transgression and madness… Now, forty years after its original publication this novel has already become a classic in Latin American literature.
While at first glance this series of three stories seems to be a satire of the interconnected lives of several bourgeoisie Mediterranean families, what comes eventually surfaces is the idea that even the most stalwart of people’s lives can suddenly be plunged into frightening and marvelous surreality. Donoso is in rare form in these tales, continuing to develop the themes that haunted "The Obscene Bird of Night," really his obsessions: bodies being taken apart (particularly de-sexualized), objects and spaces disappearing from under one’s gaze, and the ability of the self to become the other. Most enjoyable was the story of a teenager obsessed with whistling Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit in order to keep people from assigning him a real identity.
Sacred Families: Three Novellas
While at first glance this series of three stories seems to be a satire of the interconnected lives of several bourgeoisie Mediterranean families, what comes eventually surfaces is the idea that even the most stalwart of people’s lives can suddenly be plunged into frightening and marvelous surreality. Donoso is in rare form in these tales, continuing to develop the themes that haunted "The Obscene Bird of Night," really his obsessions: bodies being taken apart (particularly de-sexualized), objects and spaces disappearing from under one’s gaze, and the ability of the self to become the other. Most enjoyable was the story of a teenager obsessed with whistling Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit in order to keep people from assigning him a real identity.
Contents:
—Chattanooga Choo-Choo
—Green Atom Number Five
—Gaspard de la Nuit
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