José Donoso – författare

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.

In them he poses many of the questions raised by his fellow Latin American writers, Fuentes, García Marquez, and Vargas Llosa: What is truth? How does one use history in fiction? How does an artist create? Taratuta is a mystery story in which a writer tries to track a slippery Russian revolutionary in history and in life. Still Life with Pipe shows the comeuppance of an ambitious man when he meets true art and can't escape its grasp. Donoso is the author of the classic novel The Obscene Bird of Night.

The author of The Obscene Bird of the Night and "one of the spinal writers of the extraordinary boom in Latin-American fiction" (The New Yorker) evokes the suffocating atmosphere of a country under dictatorship, and its quietly devastating effect on the actions of those who live there, in a zone between documentary-like realism and grotesque absurdity.Curfew takes place during one twenty-four hour period in January 1985. Matilde Neruda, widow of the Nobel Prize-winning poet, has just passed away, and various factions are rallying to turn the event to their advantage: for Pinochet's junta, it represents a chance to assert political authority, while for the intellectuals who had basked in the Nerudas' light, it is an opportunity to grab the spoils of the estate.Against this backdrop of complex, often conflicting motivations, Donoso weaves a portrait of a society struggling to fashion a daily existence for itself, and of an intelligentsia vainly attempting to salvage the remnants of glory days long gone by. But Curfew is also a story of the tragic love between Judit Torre, an upper-middle-class radical who wants to escape her bitter past; and Mañungo Vera, a native son returning after a successful career as a European pop singer.

José Donoso was the leading Chilean representative of the Latin American “Boom” of the sixties and seventies that included Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Manuel Puig, among others. Written as a draft in 1973, set aside, and forgotten, The Lizard’s Tale was discovered among Donoso’s papers at Princeton University by his daughter after his death. Edited for publication by critic and poet Julio Ortega, it was published posthumously in Spanish under the title Lagartija sin cola in 2007. Suzanne Jill Levine, who knew Donoso and translated two of his earlier works, brings the book to an English-language audience for the first time. Defeated and hiding in his Barcelona apartment, painter Antonio Muñoz-Roa—clearly Donoso’s alter ego—relates the story of his flight with Luisa, his cousin, lover, and benefactor, after his scandalous desertion from the “Informalist” movement (a witty reference to a contemporary Spanish art movement and possibly an allusion to the Boom as well), in which he had been a member of a certain standing. Frustrated, old, and alone, the artist looks back on his years in the small town of Dors, a place he unsuccessfully tried to rescue from the crushing advance of modernity, and on the decline of his own family, also threatened by the changing times. In Levine’s able hands, Donoso’s clear prose shines through, forming a compact, powerful, and still-relevant meditation on the commercialization of art and the very places we inhabit.

All of a sudden, Blanca Arias has it all. The daughter of middling Nicaraguan diplomats posted to Madrid, she marries, at the age of 19, the equally young and passionate Marquess of Loria, her darling Paquito, heir to one of the largest fortunes (and most august titles) in Spain. Paquito, as if on cue, dies of diphtheria, leaving his young widowed Marquise alone, free, and inconceivably rich.Donoso’s luxurious and disturbing work details the sexual awakening of the Marquise of Loria as her white-gloved chauffeur shuttles her from tryst to tryst. But it’s not all Patek Phillipes and pink champagne: Blanca’s mother-in-law Casilda is scheming with her gang of sycophants to take back “their” fortune from this newly-minted Loria, and there’s no low they won’t sink to to get it. The mysterious presence of Luna, a Weimaraner pup who infiltrates Blanca’s chambers and hypnotizes her with his lunar gaze, twists this glittering elegy to the literary erotica of 1920s Madrid into something more: a psychological thriller and a profound investigation into the surfaces that the fortunate gild and polish to hide the darkness that lies beneath.As exuberant as it is explicit—and elegantly translated into English for the first time by Megan McDowell—The Mysterious Disappearance of the Marquise of Loria—shows the Boom-era master Donoso in a lighter mode, and the result is irresistible.

Jose Donoso has created a hauntingly beautiful novel of contemporary Chile and the human condition. Curfew takes place during a twenty-four-hour period in January 1985. Matilde Neruda, widow of the Nobel Prize-winning poet, has just passed away and Chile''s various factions rally to turn the event to their advantage. For Pinochet''s junta it represents a chance to assert political authority; for the intellectuals who had basked in Neruda''s light, it is an opportunity to grab the spoils of the estate.

Jose Donoso has created a hauntingly beautiful novel of contemporary Chile and the human condition. Curfew takes place during a twenty-four-hour period in January 1985. Matilde Neruda, widow of the Nobel Prize-winning poet, has just passed away and Chile''s various factions rally to turn the event to their advantage. For Pinochet''s junta it represents a chance to assert political authority; for the intellectuals who had basked in Neruda''s light, it is an opportunity to grab the spoils of the estate.

Casa de Campo es la obra maestra de Donoso y tal vez una de las grandes obras de la narrativa en lengua castellana. "El horizonte cultural de la novela es complejo y por momentos fas­ci­nan­te. Donoso volcó aquí su conocimiento apa­sionado de la pintura, de la música, de la literatura, de la historia europea e hispanoamericana", dice Jorge Edwards en el prólogo de este libro. Y agrega más adelante: "la voz del autor, el recurso al artificio narrativo, siempre están presentes. Hay un tejido denso, una verdadera selva de significados y de símbolos. En alguna medida, Casa de Campo no evita los recursos clásicos de la novela de aventura". Es este un libro complejo y apasionante, que per­ma­ne­cerá en la historia de la novela chilena. Bajo el sello de esta editorial José Donoso ha publicado también Veraneo y otros cuentos (1955), Tres novelitas burguesas (1985) y Sueños de mala muerte (1985, en colaboración con el ictus).

Crónica íntima y crítica de una de las generaciones más sobresalientes de la literatura de nuestro continente. En Historia personal del "boom" circulan los personajes más destacados de esos años (Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, entre otros), compañeros de ruta que aparecen retratados en su faceta más cercana –encuentros literarios, comidas de camaradería, celebraciones varias–, entregándonos un relato entrañable y ameno, no exento de polémicas y chismerío. Esta publicación incluye los textos que el propio autor agregó para la segunda edición de este libro –"Diez años después" y "El ''boom'' doméstico" de María Pilar Donoso–, así como en "otros escritos" se rescatan inéditos y crónicas que yacían en sus archivos, o estaban extraviados en otras lenguas o fueron publicados en prensa y eran inubicables. Desde ahí Donoso, una vez más, dialoga con los márgenes de esa época, incluyendo a autores fundamentales y fundacionales como Manuel Puig o Juan Carlos Onetti además de la experiencia del exilio y desexilio. Como señala Cecilia García-Huidobro Mc. en su iluminador prólogo: "No podía ser de otro modo pues Historia personal del ''boom'' obvia definiciones para delinear la experiencia literaria como una experiencia de vida. Eso lo convierte en un trazado sensible a los vaivenes del gusto que posibilita hacer y rehacer genealogías a partir de nuevas voces y relecturas. Esta edición se ha propuesto encarar dicho reto".

En El lugar sin límites, la situación particular de un pequeño villorrio campesino se ilumina y universaliza a través de la incorporación de los correlatos que entregan la imagen subyacente de un infierno, de un cielo al revés, de un universo regido por las fuerzas del mal. Este infierno no tiene límites; es un territorio inabarcable al que pertenecen todos los hombres. Allí, a pesar de las diferencias sociales, en gran medida causantes del mal, todos son iguales, un mismo destino los une y los conduce a la destrucción. Aunque los seres que habitan dicho mundo son capaces de soñar, de anhelar, de sentir y de luchar, la presión que sobre ellos ejercen las condiciones concretas en las que realizan sus vidas o en las que se han formado, les impide salir de aquella situación.