An edition of Paradiso (1966)

Paradiso.

[2. ed.]
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Paradiso.
José Lezama Lima
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Last edited by WorkBot
December 9, 2009 | History
An edition of Paradiso (1966)

Paradiso.

[2. ed.]
  • 0 Ratings
  • 18 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
  • 0 Have read

Paradiso is a novel by Cuban writer José Lezama Lima, the only one completed and published during his lifetime. Written in an elaborately baroque style, the narrative follows the childhood and youth of José Cemí, and depicts many scenes which resonate with Lezama's own life as a young poet in Havana. Many of the characters reappear in Lezama's posthumous novel Oppiano Licario, which was published in Mexico in 1977.

The novel relates Cemí's struggles with a mysterious childhood illness, describes the death of his father, and explores his homosexuality and literary sensibilities. He lives in the world of pre-Castro Havana, and the Cuban Revolution only appears as a secondary plot. Some of the later chapters incorporate narrative experiments in which several alternating stories, set during widely divergent eras and having no immediately apparent connection with José Cemí, are interwoven and eventually merged. (In a letter to Julio Cortázar, Lezama explained that these chapters represent Cemí's dreams after the death of his father.) Because of the graphic homosexual scenes and the novel's ambivalence towards the political situation of the day, Paradiso encountered controversy and publication problems. Today it is widely read in the Spanish-speaking world but has not achieved the same fame in English-speaking countries despite a translation by Gregory Rabassa.

Despite having written one of the most accomplished novels in Cuba's history, Lezama said he never considered himself a novelist, but rather a poet who wrote a poem that became a novel. Paradiso can thus be considered a kind of long poem, just as well as a neo-baroque novel.

Publish Date
Publisher
Ediciones Era
Language
Spanish
Pages
489

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Paradiso
Paradiso
2000, Dalkey Archive Press
in English - 1st Dalkey Archive ed.
Cover of: Paradiso.
Paradiso.
1974, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
in English
Cover of: Paradiso
Paradiso
1974, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
in English
Cover of: Paradiso.
Paradiso.
1970, Ediciones Era
in Spanish - [2. ed.]

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Edición revisada por el autor y al cuidado de Julio Cortázar y Carlos Monsiváis.

Published in
[México
Series
Biblioteca era

The Physical Object

Pagination
489 p.
Number of pages
489

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL18434276M
OCLC/WorldCat
318936

Source records

Oregon Libraries MARC record

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History

Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
December 9, 2009 Edited by WorkBot link works
April 20, 2009 Edited by ImportBot add OCLC number
October 16, 2008 Created by ImportBot Imported from Oregon Libraries MARC record