Borges and The Eternal Orangutans - Softcover

Costa, Margaret Jull; Verissimo, Luis Fernando

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081121592X ISBN 13: 9780811215923

Publisher: New Directions, 2005

Synopsis

Jorge Luis Borges is the hero of this literary whodunit by one of Brazil's most celebrated writers. Vogelstein is a loner who has always lived among books. Suddenly, fate grabs hold of his insignificant life and carries him off to Buenos Aires, to a conference on Edgar Allan Poe, the inventor of the modern detective story. There Vogelstein meets his idol, Jorge Luis Borges, and for reasons that a mere passion for literature cannot explain, he finds himself at the center of a murder investigation that involves arcane demons, the mysteries of the Kaballah, the possible destruction of the world, and the Elizabethan magus John Dee's theory of the "Eternal Orangutan," which, given all the time in the world, would end up writing all the known books in the cosmos. Verissimo's small masterpiece is at once a literary tour de force and a brilliant mystery novel.

About this title

Review:

"Verissimo unveils the secret with great cleverness and grim humor."

About the Author:

MARGARET JULL COSTA is a three-time winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. For New Directions, she has translated works by Rafael Chirbes, Javier Marías, Fernando Pessoa, Eça de Queirós, and Enrique Vila-Matas.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 081121592X
• ISBN 13: 9780811215923
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 135