{"product_id":"the-obscene-bird-of-night","title":"The Obscene Bird of Night: Unabridged, Centennial Edition","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNewly revised and updated by Megan McDowell, and with a new introduction by Alejandro Zambra: at last, the unabridged, centennial edition of Donoso's terrifying masterpiece sees the light of day.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"The brilliance of its prose has made the novel an object of awe and intimidation, a kind of totem, for every Chilean writer who has followed.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e -- New York Review of Books\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDeep 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, \u003cem\u003eThe Obscene Bird of Night\u003c\/em\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNow, 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 \u003cem\u003epajarito\u003c\/em\u003e (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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the great Boom writers, \u003cb\u003eJosé Donoso\u003c\/b\u003e (1924-1996) wrote novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry. He worked stints as a shepherd in Patagonia and a stevedore in Buenos Aires before studying at Princeton and teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He was twice a Guggenheim Fellow and won the William Faulkner Foundation Prize as well as Chile's highest literary honor, the National Literature Prize, among many other awards. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLeonard Mades\u003c\/strong\u003e (1918-2017) taught comparative literature, French and Spanish at Hunter College, from which he retired as Professor Emeritus. The winner of a PEN International Prize for Translation, in the 1950s he worked for CARE in El Salvador, Haiti, and Bolivia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMegan McDowell\u003c\/strong\u003e has won the English PEN award, the Premio Valle-Inclán, and a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; she also has been nominated four times for the International Booker Prize. She won the 2022 National Book Award in translation alongside Samanta Schweblin for \u003cem\u003eSeven Empty Houses\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHardie St. Martin\u003c\/strong\u003e was born in 1924 in Belize. The translator of Vincente Aleixandre, Roque Dalton, Enrique Lihn, Nicanor Parra, and Luisa Valenzuela, he was a Guggenheim fellow and won a PEN International Translation Award. He died in 2007.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"José Donoso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48241095082269,"sku":"9780811232227","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0821\/9095\/8877\/files\/8.jpg?v=1713626870","url":"https:\/\/staging.anovelideaphilly.com\/products\/the-obscene-bird-of-night","provider":"A Novel Idea on Passyunk","version":"1.0","type":"link"}