You are invited into a funhouse of many hands. Jorge Amado kaleidoscopes with Manuel Puig, Cabrera Infante, José Saramago & Madame Blavatsky in this intramural reductio ad absurdum of bowdlerised caesars & rat-arsed revolutionaries & all the evolved flotsam of that ancient quarrel between poetry & the purgatorial social contract handed down from on-high or perhaps from atop a hill in Alentejo. Historical materialism is this: ANIZAR.
ANIZAR. Equus Press. ISBN 978-1-7394310-3-7. Paperback, 124 pp. €10.00. Publication date: 1 April 2024. (PDF)
This dark, humorous tall tale sparkles with wicked & hallucinatory power. A surreal exploration of existence & perception unfolds amidst the backdrop of an alternative version of Portuguese history. As the narrative navigates through disjointed scenes & introspective musings, every twist & turn revealing new layers of speculation & mystery, the protagonist, Albufarkas, undertaker maudit & artiste manqué, is a curious anomaly, a relic of a future that has already happened, “a refugee from the fate evolution had in store”. Somewhere between James Joyce’s Ulysses & Thomas Pynchon’s best work, Anizar shows Louis Armand once again writing dangerously about the fractured psyche & corroded self.—Michel Delville
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LOUIS ARMAND 