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A review by lauren_endnotes
Borges and the Eternal Orangutans by Luís Fernando Veríssimo, Margaret Jull Costa
5.0
"Solutions can always be found in libraries."
From BORGES AND THE ETERNAL ORANGUTANS by Luis Fernando Verissimo, tr. from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, 2000/2004 by @ndpublishing
Our story opens with Vogelstein, a Brazilian writer and translator, who is making arrangements to travel to Buenos Aires to attend a symposium in honor of Edgar Allan Poe's work.
The first-person narrative is addressed to Jorge Luis Borges, Vogelstein's literary idol. (He even named his cat El Aleph...) and he shares his surprise to finally meet Borges, at the conference's cocktail hour. All the scholars jockey to get JLB's attention, yet Vogelstein manages to sustain it and get a personal invitation to visit Borges at his home library.
The story jumps into a literary murder mystery - who killed the Poe literary scholar at the conference?? And Vogelstein's wildest dreams come true when Borges "takes the case" and enlists his help to solve the crime. Ciphers, codes, and a lot of allusions to Borges, Poe, Lovecraft's short stories and all sorts of other intellectual pathways and tangents, and then a surprise ending...
Rollicking good time for bibliophiles, mystery lovers, and Borges fans. In other words, I absolutely loved it! So much, in fact, that I immediately bought the other Verissimo translation from New Directions, The Club of Angels (2002).
Got a real kick out of this quote from Vogelstein's perspective as to why he never got married:
"I had always thought of a permanent domestic commitment to any woman (other than Aunt Raquel) as an intellectual threat. Not that another woman would steal my soul, but she would fatally interfere with the organization of my books..."
From BORGES AND THE ETERNAL ORANGUTANS by Luis Fernando Verissimo, tr. from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa, 2000/2004 by @ndpublishing
Our story opens with Vogelstein, a Brazilian writer and translator, who is making arrangements to travel to Buenos Aires to attend a symposium in honor of Edgar Allan Poe's work.
The first-person narrative is addressed to Jorge Luis Borges, Vogelstein's literary idol. (He even named his cat El Aleph...) and he shares his surprise to finally meet Borges, at the conference's cocktail hour. All the scholars jockey to get JLB's attention, yet Vogelstein manages to sustain it and get a personal invitation to visit Borges at his home library.
The story jumps into a literary murder mystery - who killed the Poe literary scholar at the conference?? And Vogelstein's wildest dreams come true when Borges "takes the case" and enlists his help to solve the crime. Ciphers, codes, and a lot of allusions to Borges, Poe, Lovecraft's short stories and all sorts of other intellectual pathways and tangents, and then a surprise ending...
Rollicking good time for bibliophiles, mystery lovers, and Borges fans. In other words, I absolutely loved it! So much, in fact, that I immediately bought the other Verissimo translation from New Directions, The Club of Angels (2002).
Got a real kick out of this quote from Vogelstein's perspective as to why he never got married:
"I had always thought of a permanent domestic commitment to any woman (other than Aunt Raquel) as an intellectual threat. Not that another woman would steal my soul, but she would fatally interfere with the organization of my books..."