Umberto Pasti

A gorgeously written novel; the language, even in translation, is beautiful. A quick read, and one of the most amusing and disturbing novels I've come across - blending as it does the literature of the decadence, the campy flamboyance of Firbank, and the distilled evil of Sade, obsession, horticulture and pathology. In it is the sensibility of Ovid, Kafka and Mengele. It is also a send up of colonialism and a reflection on the inconvenient phenomenon of random, violent death. I certainly hope the author will try fiction again.… (mehr)