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A review by nealadolph
Mulata by Miguel Ángel Asturias
4.0
My advice is this: Set everything you know about literature aside. This tosses out the notion of narration, of plotline, of symbolism, or metaphor. Mulata is just exactly what it is.
And so, it should be said, I've never read anything like this before. A surreal fever dream, a lagoon, a black lake where all of the bodies of the impossible are transforming into all of the other bodies of the impossible. A mess, beautiful and robust. Imagery that defies the brain and demands more of the reader than any book I have ever read. A suspension of disbelief beyond any previously accepted suspension. Never has a book forced me to pay so much attention to things I couldn't wrap my attention around.
This is a radical and bewildering mix of mythologies, ideologies, concepts, images, cultures, views of the world. Transformations abound and abound and abound. A grand, sweltering build up to an apocalypse, the collapse of an unrecognizable reality. Surreal? Is that the word here?
But don't be convinced that it is as complex as the language or the events suggest - the story here is simple and it is clear. And it is, in its attempt to bridge and supersede and honour the two worlds that it brings together, highly moral, serious work.
I'm saving this book. It has earned it's place on my shelf.
And so, it should be said, I've never read anything like this before. A surreal fever dream, a lagoon, a black lake where all of the bodies of the impossible are transforming into all of the other bodies of the impossible. A mess, beautiful and robust. Imagery that defies the brain and demands more of the reader than any book I have ever read. A suspension of disbelief beyond any previously accepted suspension. Never has a book forced me to pay so much attention to things I couldn't wrap my attention around.
This is a radical and bewildering mix of mythologies, ideologies, concepts, images, cultures, views of the world. Transformations abound and abound and abound. A grand, sweltering build up to an apocalypse, the collapse of an unrecognizable reality. Surreal? Is that the word here?
But don't be convinced that it is as complex as the language or the events suggest - the story here is simple and it is clear. And it is, in its attempt to bridge and supersede and honour the two worlds that it brings together, highly moral, serious work.
I'm saving this book. It has earned it's place on my shelf.