O Amazonas Escuro (Paperback or Softback)

Garber, Eugene K.

ISBN 10: 1732103887 / ISBN 13: 9781732103887

Published by Eugene K. Garber 9/1/2018, 2018

O Amazonas Escuro. Seller Inventory # BBS-9781732103887

Synopsis:

O Amazonas Escuro, second in Eugene K. Garber's Eroica Trilogy, has earned the praise of noted anthropologist Gary Gossen: "Fasten your seatbelts for a wild ride! In this extraordinary book, Eugene Garber juxtaposes a parody version of an Indiana Jones-type adventure among Amazonian Indians (the Other) with a profound reflection on several great themes in Western philosophy (Ourselves)." Exactly. Who would have expected to hear the voices of such as Jung, Luce Irigaray and Nietzsche resounding with those of howler monkeys in the forests of Amazonia? Myth, botany, theology, sexual shapeshifting, all jostle against each other in this wildly imaginative novel. K, the hero of the novel, a scientific anthropologist, is hell bent on bringing rational order to his descriptions of the culture of a tribe of Amazonian indigenes. But the tribe will not have it so, persisting in its mythological treatments of sky, river, animals and self. Nor will outside visitors to the tribal compound, bringing with them botanical passions, wounds of war, erotic obsession, and cinematographic exploitation. Meanwhile, looming over the entire enterprise are spirits of clashing ideals, resonant voices of western thinkers from Plato to Derrida. And if these disruptions were not enough to shatter K's project, there is Korakama, the tribal magus, master of enchantments, curses, spellbinding rhetoric and potent violence. And so the novel plays out its intense conflicts, K doggedly rational, the world around him rife with irrationality. Inevitably there comes in the final chapter an eruption as memorable as any in recent fiction.

Review:

Eugene Garber reveals a hitherto obscure fact: some of the greatest philosophers of the Western canon penetrated into the Amazonian jungle, there to blend with current anthropological discourse and with the timeless, flesh-and-blood texts of the aboriginal cultures. Musical, absorbing and gem-like, 0 Amazonas Escuro sparkles in the dark.
Ricardo Nirenberg, author of Wave Mechanics: A Love Story 

K, the hero of this extraordinary narrative, is an etic (objective) anthropologist, living in an exotic tribal compound on the Amazon, searching for mappable pattern within the disorderly, violent, and paradoxical narrative flow of diurnal life. His interlocutors are tribal leaders, boy and women lovers, evangelists and adventurers, artists, filmmakers, and a dozen or so philosophers, but his most compelling and unpredictable exchange is with tribal clown and magus Koro­kama, one of contemporary fiction’s most fascinating and challenging characters.
Robert Coover, author of Noir 

As a caiman swims unscathed among hungry piranhas, this novel navigates a river of thorny theories. Yet the reader need not fear. Conflicting worldviews are embodied by vivid characters and argued in marvelous gestures and languages. Many denizens of Garber’s Amazon nurse incompatible aspirations which he weaves into a bloody climax worthy of Conrad. These Tropiques are not Tristes, but fragrant and full of omens.
Sarah White, author of Cleopatra Haunts the Hudson

Bibliographic Details

Title: O Amazonas Escuro (Paperback or Softback)
Publisher: Eugene K. Garber 9/1/2018
Publication Date: 2018
Binding: Paperback or Softback
Illustrator: Hassan, Lynn
Condition: New
Book Type: Book