The Obscene Bird of Night: Unabridged, Centennial Edition

Deep in a maze of musty, forgotten hallways, Mudito rummages through piles of old newspapers. The mute caretaker of the crumbling former abbey, he is hounded by a coven of ancient witches who are bent on transforming him, bit by bit, into the terrifying imbunche: a twisted monster with all of its orifices sewn up, buried alive in its own body. Once, Mudito walked upright and spoke clearly; once he was the personal assistant to one of Chile's most powerful politicians, Jerónimo de Azcoitía. Once, he ruled over a palace of monsters, built to shield Jeronimo's deformed son from any concept of beauty. Once, he plotted with the wise woman Peta Ponce to bed Inés, Jerónimo's wife. Mudito was Humberto, Jerónimo was strong, Inés was beautiful--once upon a time... Narrated in voices that shift and multiply, The Obscene Bird of Night frets the seams between master and slave, rich and poor, reality and nightmares, man and woman, self and other in a maniacal inquiry into the horrifying transformations that power can wreak on identity.

Now, star translator Megan McDowell has revised and updated the classic translation, restoring nearly twenty pages of previously untranslated text that was mysteriously cut from the 1972 edition. Newly complete, with missing motifs restored, plots deepened, and characters more richly shaded, Donoso's pajarito (little bird), as he called it, returns to print to celebrate the centennial of its author's birth in full plumage, as brilliant as it is bizarre.

Author: José Donoso
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 04/23/2024
Pages: 464
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.97lbs
Size: 7.99h x 5.34w x 1.29d
ISBN: 9780811232227


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2024

About the Author
Donoso, José: -

One of the great Boom writers, José Donoso (1924-1996) wrote novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry. He worked stints as a shepherd in Patagonia and a stevedore in Buenos Aires before studying at Princeton and teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He was twice a Guggenheim Fellow and won the William Faulkner Foundation Prize as well as Chile's highest literary honor, the National Literature Prize, among many other awards.

St Martin, Hardie: - Hardie St. Martin was born in 1924 in Belize. The translator of Vincente Aleixandre, Roque Dalton, Enrique Lihn, Nicanor Parra, and Luisa Valenzuela, he was a Guggenheim fellow and won a PEN International Translation Award. He died in 2007.Mades, Leonard: - Leonard Mades (1918-2017) taught comparative literature, French and Spanish at Hunter College, from which he retired as Professor Emeritus. The winner of a PEN International Prize for Translation, in the 1950s he worked for CARE in El Salvador, Haiti, and Bolivia.
Et al...