Animal World / Mundo Animal (A Xenos Dual-Language Edition: Spanish-English) [Paperback]

Antonio Di Benedetto (Author), H. E. Francis (Translator), Jorge Garcia-Gomez (Afterword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1879378175 | ISBN-13: 978-1879378179 | Publication Date: October 1, 1997 | Edition: bilingual (English/Italian)

ANIMAL WORLD is the first English translation of MUNDO ANIMAL (1952), a collection of fantastic stories by a major Argentine writer, Antonio Di Benedetto (1922-1986). In each of the stories an animal enters the life of the narrator and becomes the focus of obsessive thought. Written simply, almost carelessly, the series of sixteen builds a sense of impending doom. Sometimes the story hinges on a pun, a distorted folktale, or an illogical association. The reader is drawn step by step into a world that is slowly transforming into Animal World. Angel Flores, the great popularizer of Latin American literature, found in these stories an “originality that makes them kin to works by Franz Kafka and James Joyce.” This text is English only.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Spanish (translation)
Original Language: Spanish --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Antonio Di Benedetto (1922-1986) began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Dostoyevsky and Pirandello. His first story collection was MUNDO ANIMAL, which appeared in 1952 and won prestigeous awards. (A revised version came out in 1971; this translation uses the first edition.) EL PENTGONO, his first novel, followed in the same fantastic vein, in 1955. (It was later revised and retitled ANNABELLA.) The novel ZAMA, is considered one of the greatest novels of Argentina, an existential masterpiece. Di Benedetto wrote three more novels, EL SILENCIERO (The Silencer, 1964), LOS SUICIDAS (The Suicides, 1969) and SOMBRAS NADA MS (Nothing But Shadows, 1985), the first expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. He produced many stories, some anticipating the techniques of the nouveau roman of Alain Robbe- Grillet, some compared to the works of Julio Cortzar and Ernesto Sbato. In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, he was imprisoned and tortured. Released after a year, he went into exile in Spain, and returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards, but strangely never acquired the worldwide fame of other Latin American writers. Perhaps more translations will correct this injustice.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 138 pages
• Publisher: Xenos Books; bilingual (English/Italian) edition (October 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1879378175
• ISBN-13: 978-1879378179
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,648,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Animal World appeals to the senses and the strange., January 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Animal World / Mundo Animal (A Xenos Dual-Language Edition: Spanish-English) (Paperback)

_Animal World_, or _Mundo Animal_ for you linguistic purists, recalls, at its best, Jorge Luis Borges, a canonical Spanish writer.

Stories like "Concerning Vipers" (about, I would argue, a man's delightfully evil fixation with cruelty), "Koch's Butterflies," and the exquisite "Rescued Purity" (much more interesting than its title suggests) recall the strangeness of Borges' magically disturbing vistas of mens' ideas and the bizarre things and events that accompany them.

And, as much as I hate to judge a book by its cover, the more I look at this book's cover, a strangely photo-realistic painting of a man in a cat-suit, the more I am compelled to blow it up and paste it on my bedroom wall.

My only complaint? A reason for 4 stars instead of 5? Translation by H.E. Francis is sometimes too literal, possibly losing some of the flavor and color of the language. But in the stories mentioned above, and most others, the excitement of weirdness comes blazing through.

Cat-owners: the last story, my absolute personal favorite of the bunch, makes it all worth it. After reading it, look at the picture on the cover and get a stupid grin on your face.

At least I do. "Fuci-leopardo."

Just read it.

Trust me.