Under the Jaguar Sun (Paperback)

~ (Author) "OAXACA" is pronounced "Wahaka..." (more)
Key Phrases: jaguar sun, Madame Odile, Monte Albin

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A sumptuous small gem of a book, this volume contains three of the tales on the five senses planned by Calvino, who died last year. Taste, hearing, and smell receive arch and imaginative treatment in language that links every sense to love. The wife and husband of the title story visit Mexico, where they become so enamored of the spicy cuisine that their gasps and raptures are transferred from the bedroom to the dining table. The local religious art and architecture gain deeper meaning for the couple as they become more sensually attuned to the subtlest range of flavors. In "A King Listens," a monarch sits riveted to his throne and paralyzed with fear, trying to hear every fragile sound that reverberates in his palace. Any "acoustical sign" may be open to interpretation; even silence and the flow of time are audible, perhaps ominous. Far from the palace walls, a woman's song beckons the king, promising freedom. "The Name, the Nose" focuses on the unique scent of a desired female, whether it is the costly product of a parfumerie on the Champs-Elysees, or the rank aroma of a woman asleep in a beery den. The trio provides exquisite fare from one of Italy's masters.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Many 17th-century artists took the five senses as a theme. Calvino revived this idea in these threeof what had been a projected fivestories, each informed by a conscious and comprehensive sensuality. A married couple visiting Mexico savors the spicy cuisine, complexly linked to the carnal preoccupations of both native and colonial religions and to their own erotic complicity. A paranoid despot, fantastically unable to stir from his throne, lives through his hearing. Parallel diachronic strands in the final story point up similarities among a primitive hominid, a 19th-century Parisian dandy, and a London rock musician, all obsessed by the fleeting scent of a femalea scent mingled with the odor of death. Baroque but unforced, these stories whet the appetite for "sight" and "touch"alas, left incomplete at Calvino's death. Patricia Dooley, Univ. of Washinton Lib. Sch., Seattle
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books (April 5, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156927942
• ISBN-13: 978-0156927949
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #550,779 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Posthumous -- and it shows, December 26, 2001

By	Phil Moores (UK) - See all my reviews

A collection of 3 short stories. Each deals with one of the senses and were going to be part of a projected suite with, presumably, some kind of framing device. Calvino was one of those happy people that can write works that stretch the intellect without altogether sacrificing story, plot and characterisation. The middle tale ('A King Listens') is unsuccessful, ending up as nothing more than an experiment - who knows whether it would have improved had he time to revise it, it was the last thing he wrote before his death. But the opening and closing stories are much better, especially the latter ('The Name, The Nose'), although still not prime Calvino (try 'Adam One Afternoon', 'Invisible Cities' or 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller' if you're new to the writer and want to know what his talents can *really* produce). 'Under the Jaguar Sun', the title story set in Mexico, deals with taste and develops the idea of human relationships as a form of canibalism in which we digest our partner to taste their thoughts, feelings, desires and wishes in order to make them part of ourselves. 'The Name, The Nose' takes three characters (a Proustian aesthete, a prehistoric apeman on the verge of walking upright and a drug-addled rock musician) that are all in love with an unknown woman identifiable only by her scent, eventually discovering that she has died since making love with them. Despite the differences in the characters, their tales are interlinked surpringly smoothly and satisfyingly. However, due to its posthumous nature, the book is very short, only 83 pages of big type, and so can only be recommended to Calvino fans.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three Studies On A Theme, August 23, 2000

By	Mark Valentine (Port Angeles, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I think that these three short stories act as a study on perception and awareness. Each story embodies a sense: In the first story, "Under The Jaguar Sun," Calvino writes about the sense of taste; in the second, "A King Listens," he writes about the sense of hearing; and finally, in "The Name, The Nose," he writes about the olfactory sense. Reading all three in sequence, the stories take on the texture of a novella (Calvino, unfortunately, died before he could complete two more stories of senses).

Each story is entirely different. What I enjoyed about the second story is the Poe-like ("The Pit And The Pendulum") Dostoyevsky-esque ("Notes From The Underground") nature of a King's interior monologue of living as a monarch. The Palace becomes corporeal and the mannerisms of regality become personality traits. But what the king hears takes him into his own thoughts, leading him into an implosion of spirit.

Pick it up if your are a Calvino fan. If not, reading it might be a good way to become a Calvino fan.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Calvino takes you on a journey through your senses!!!!, August 23, 1998

By A Customer

The ear, the smell and the taste (unluckily Calvino died before writing the other two) give place to three incredible stories. After reading this book you will discover that the human organs are more than just that. The senses are not just instruments to go around in life, if we take them to their highest consequenses life appears to be completely different, new, renewed. This book it's a must!!!!