Novel
La guerra prodigiosa
Not translated into English
Rafael Ángel Herra · 1986
Synopsis
A Saint and a Demon of a thousand names, Belial, Adramelech, Belzebuth or Satanail, wage a war in which good, evil and the origins of Lucifer are at stake. The narrative runs through magical spaces and labyrinths, infernal images and alchemists' plots, loves and martyrdoms; one glimpses paradise and a brothel with seven vaults, where the prostitute Euglosa appears, among Sosibios, Heliodoro and Radamante. The voice passes from Lucifer to an all-seeing narrator.
Context
The novel was published in 1986 by Editorial Costa Rica, 323 pages adorned with woodcuts by Francisco Amighetti, and the distance-learning university press reissued it in 2014. Amalia Chaverri counts it among the books that broke, during the decade, with the realist canon; Álvaro Zamora Castro sees in it a delirious novel of great stylistic rigour, which opens the way to a non-realist literature in the country. It prompted a study of its intertextuality as early as 1991, then a university dissertation. A German translation is reported.
Who it is for
A long novel in Spanish, with a baroque style and a circular structure, full of learned names and play with images.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by critics as one of the three texts that broke with tradition in Costa Rican narrative of the eighties.
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