Product Description

two novels, Cuban ex-patriot, tr SJ Levine

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #851623 in Books
• Published on: 1995-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 273 pages

From Library Journal
This volume combines two avante-garde novels, published in 1972 and 1978, respectively, by this Cuban expatriate author. Both deal with a main character who undergoes a metamorphosis.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Cobra is composed of jewel-like sentences that unfold like paper origami in convoluted proliferation. . . . Maitreya is one of the most radiant texts I have ever read, and the translation by Suzanne Jill Levine appears as seamless as a single ocean wave, spilling us from high elegance to low camp and back again without pause." -- Bruce Benderson, Cups 7-12-95

"Hypnotic, poetic and challenging." -- Gay Times 9-95

"Maitreya [is] a mesmerizing literary mosaic fusing the memories of a Caribbean sense of place with a fluid existential state where transmigration is commonplace." -- Juana Ponce de Leon, Voice Literary Supplement 5-94

"Maitreya's outrageous characters maneuver through endless passages and trapdoors, as if in a 'Tibetan Book of the Dead' recited by saucy drag queens. The dialogue can be as sharp as that of divas speculating cock size, but the sentences are sometimes as ornate as the spaces his characters inhabit, rambunctious as their makeup." -- Lawrence Chua, Voice Literary Supplement 5-94

"Sarduy rendered the epiphany of the body luminous, where the pleasure of the void meets the furious fire of the world." -- Washington Post Book World 7-31-95

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

Customer Reviews

Elegant prose by Sarduy
"Cobra and Maitreya" contains two novels in one volume. These novels are the work of Severo Sarduy, the Cuban-born writer who left his homeland for France in 1960. This volume is an English edition, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, with an introduction by James McCourt. Each novel is an elegantly ornate piece of prose; however, in each novel, the ebullient wordplay seems to overwhelm the basics of plot and characterization.

The title character of "Cobra" is a performer in the "Lyrical Theater of Dolls"; Cobra undergoes a torturous physical transformation in the course of the story. The novel also takes us into the world of a gang whose members have names like Scorpion, Tiger, and Totem. The equally bizarre "Maitreya" is a story about Buddhism and sex, among other things.

Sarduy's prose is, at times, witty, outrageous, grotesque, luxurious, hallucinatory, and/or sexually explicit. He occasionally throws in sarcastic messages to the reader in parodic footnotes.... The plots (or lack thereof) did not engage me, and I found the characters difficult to connect with. Nevertheless, adventurous readers may find these novels worthwhile; they are certainly remarkable works of 20th century fiction.