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Yesterday
Yesterday | Juan Emar
3 posts | 1 read | 1 to read
In the city of San Agustín de Tango, the banal is hard to tell from the bizarre. In a single day, a man is guillotined for preaching the intellectual pleasures of sex; an ostrich in a zoo, reversing roles, devours a lion; and a man, while urinating, goes bungee jumping through time itself--and manages to escape. Or does he? Witness the weird machinery of Yesterday, where the Chilean master Juan Emar deploys irony, digression, and giddy repetitions to ratchet up narrative tension again and again and again, in this thrilling whirlwind of the ecstatically unexpected--all wed to the happiest marriage of any novel, ever. Born in Chile at the tail end of the nineteenth century, Juan Emar was largely overlooked during his lifetime, and lived in self-imposed exile from the literary circles of his day. A cult of Emarians, however, always persisted, and after several rediscoveries in the Spanish-speaking world, he is finally getting his international due with the English-language debut of Yesterday, deftly translated by Megan McDowell. Emar's work offers unique and delirious pleasures, and will be an epiphany to anglophone readers.
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blurb
charl08
Yesterday | Juan Emar
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I do like a map.

review
charl08
Yesterday | Juan Emar
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Mehso-so

I have no idea what I just read!

bnp I'm curious about what made you pick this one up? 3y
charl08 @bnp I subscribe to the publisher: makes me read things I don't usually read. Sometimes I love them, sometimes not! 3y
bnp Ah, that makes sense. 3y
43 likes4 comments
quote
charl08
Yesterday | Juan Emar
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This book is bonkers.

"I have started with the large - the belly - and fallen into the small - the pocket depths. I've tried starting with the immense, the pot-bellied man himself, and I've seen that approach, as well, is a downhill slope to the tiny. And now there I am in the extreme minuscule, at the very tip of a fuzz ball in the corner of the pot-bellied man's waistcoat pocket. I must use the opposite method and perhaps all will be resolved.

Emilymdxn The cover is amazing! 3y
charl08 @Emilymdxn yes, there is an ostrich-related incident, so it's even relevant. 3y
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