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AvalovaraAuthor: Osman Lins Translator: Gregory Rabassa Latin American Literature Series May 2002 332 pages, 6 x 9 paperback, 1-56478-320-0 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $12.76—20% OFF! 
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Book Description
A work remarkable for both its form and execution, Avalovara belongs to the tradition of contemporary writing that Gregory Rabassa calls "the inventive novel." These novels include such works as Julio Cortzar's Hopscotch and Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar, and are "narratives where the author produces the raw materials and hands them over for the reader to give them shape or structure and sometimes meaning."
The protagonist's courtship of three women constitutes the main plot of Avalovara. He pursues the sophisticated and inaccessible Roos across Europe; falls in love with Ceclia, a carnal, compassionate hermaphrodite; and achieves a tender, erotic alliance with a woman known only by an ideogram. Reinforcing the inventive nature of Lins's masterpiece, the action develops within a rigorous, puzzlelike design—visually represented by a spiral and a five-word palindrome.
About the Author
| Osman Lins was born in 1924 in Brazil. He is author of Avalovara and The Queen of the Prisons of Greece. He died in 1978. |  |
About the Translator
| Gregory Rabassa is one of the most renowned translators of both Spanish and Portuguese literature. He has translated books by Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, José Lezama Lima, and Osman Lins, among many others. |
Praise
"Avalovara rivals Lezama Lima's Paradiso in capricious difficulty and Cortzar's Hopscotch in its gimmickry, but behind all of its intricate mystification there is a simple and powerful tale."—Nation"Lins has beautifully made the form the meaning of the book; he has breathed life into the most abstract of elements, the spiral and the square."—Baltimore Sun