Mario Bellatin – författare

From the groundbreaking author of Beauty Salon, The Large Glass, Jacob the Mutant, Mario Bellatin delivers a rousing, allegorical novel following the widowed keeper of a mysterious garden. When art student Izu’s teacher asks her to visit the famous collection of Mr. Murakami, she publishes a firm rebuttal to his curation. Instead of responding with fury, the rich man pursues her hand in marriage. When we meet her in the opening pages, Mrs. Murakami is watching the demolition of her now-dead husband’s most prized part of the estate: his garden. The novel that follows takes place in a strange, not-quite-real Japan of the author’s imagination. But who, in fact, holds the role of author? As Mr. Murakami’s garden is demolished, so too is the narrative’s authenticity, leaving the reader to wonder: did this book’s creator exist at all? Mario Bellatin has revolutionized the state of Latin American literature with his experimental, shocking novels. With this brand-new, highly anticipated edition of Mrs. Murakami''s Garden from lauded translator Heather Cleary, readers have access to a playful modern classic that transcends reality.

Mario Bellatin’s complex dreamscape, offered here in a brand-new translation, presents a timely allegorical portrait of the body and society in decay, victim to inscrutable pandemic.

In a large, unnamed city, a strange, highly infectious disease begins to spread, afflicting its victims with an excruciating descent toward death, particularly unsparing in its assault of those on society''s margins. Spurned by their loved ones and denied treatment by hospitals, the sick are left to die on the streets until a beauty salon owner, whose previous caretaking experience extended only to the exotic fish tanks scattered among his workstations, opens his doors as a refuge. In the ramshackle Morgue, victim to persecution and violence, he accompanies his male guests as they suffer through the lifeless anticipation of certain death, eventually leaving the wistful narrator in complete, ill-fated isolation.

From Latin America’s literary prankster Mario Bellatin: a novella that puzzles from the first page with its liminal, Lynchian atmosphere.

In an unnamed country by the sea, a grieving kleptomaniac known only as Our Woman is determined to reach the House. There, she will be able to listen to her childhood voice. As she winds her way through a day replete with odd choices and unresolved conclusions, the losses that define Our Woman take clearer shape, while the circumstances of her world turn more opaque. Inhabitants form poetry salons and line up for measly food distributions. Authoritarian landladies maintain an iron-grip on their complexes, men in blue overcoats roam the streets, and train stations remain deserted. Perpetual Law thwarts convention, casting a mysterious pallor over typical narrative questions: what is happening here, and why?

A patron to all that is subversive and unruly, Mario Bellatin’s work beckons to engage with the reality of borders, linguistic exile, and the types of self-estrangement that can barely be articulated. Translated into English by Stephen Beachy, Perpetual Law is familiar as it is disturbing; enrapturing as it is challenging. It is an important key to Bellatin’s complex body of work.