Valenzuela, Luisa

New York. 1992. May 1992. Simon & Schuster. Advance Uncorrected Reader's Proof. Very Good in Wrappers . 0671687646. Translated from the Spanish by Toby Talbot. . paperback. . keywords: Literature Translated Argentina Latin America Women. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Three A.M. The present. A man emerges from a building, a revolver in his pocket. Upstairs, in her apartment, alone in her bed, lies a woman-an actress the man met for the first time earlier that evening. She is dead. There is no motive, no history. All there is to know is that the paths of two strangers crossed one random night, and only one has emerged alive. The man is Agustin, an Argentine novelist adrift in New York, trying desperately to write. ‘Write with your body,' his Argentine lover, Roberta, once urged him, and somewhere between an evening at an avant-garde play and that furtive early-morning escape, he has followed her advice, written indelibly, and opened the way to madness. Luisa Valenzuela's dark story is a novel of obsession and crime, a commentary on the fine line between creativity and insanity. Following in Dostoyevsky's footsteps, Valenzuela leads us through Agustin's psyche as he struggles through his guilt to understand the nature and origin of his crime. She plunges us, as well, into the life and mind of Roberta, who becomes obsessed with the murder, understanding that it was probably she who inspired it. Black Novel is a stark and powerful work, literary to its core. Valenzuela is at home on the streets of New York, and she draws a penetrating portrait of the sub-city, complete with its filth and sadomasochism, its quirky and marginalized denizens, its seductive perversity. inventory #16713 ISBN: 0671687646.