The Novices of Lerna
The Novices of Lerna
Ángel Bonomini
Translated from the Spanish by Jordan Landsman.
A forgotten masterpiece by an enigmatic master of Argentine fantastic literature.
When unambitious scholar Ramón Beltra receives a mysterious invitation to a lucrative six-month fellowship at the University of Lerna in Switzerland, he reluctantly complies with the unusual qualifying paperwork requiring several pages of detailed measurements and photographs of his entire body. Beltra soon finds himself in the deserted university town of Lerna, together with twenty-three other “novices” subject to the same undisclosed project—all of them doppelgangers of Beltra himself. At first, Beltra is the only one to bristle at the school’s dizzying array of rules and regulations, but this all changes with the onset of an uncontrollable epidemic, and the fellows begin dying off one by one...
The Novices of Lerna introduces Bonomini’s fantastic tales to English readers for the first time. Shot through with wry humor and tender absurdity, these meditations on identity, surveillance, and isolation remain eerily prescient.
“I’m so enthralled by the book that one night, when Borges came over, I proposed we read the only story I hadn’t read yet: “The Novices of Lerna.” We were dazzled. The story is admirably told, with much wisdom, everything is spot on.”
—Letter from Adolfo Bioy Casares to Ángel Bonomini, September 18, 1972
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Praise for The Novices of Lerna
“Bonomini’s imagination has a watercolor lightness that sets him apart from his contemporaries.”—Natasha Wimmer, The New York Review of Books
"These surreal stories reckon with identity, perception, and existence... A beguiling blend of the cerebral and the visceral."—Kirkus Reviews
"[Bonomini] makes a noteworthy English-language debut with this entrancing collection."—Publishers Weekly
“A ghost of a book that haunts and perplexes, enticing each reader in with its mastery of language and craft.”—Asymptote
"Bonomini's fantastic collection [allows] the worlds of his stories to slither out and off the page, offer forbidden fruit, and shoot readers into a fallen and forgotten world where the real is absurd and the absurd is really the most true thing on offer."—The Rumpus
“Bonomini regularly turns language on its head while stubbornly refusing to engage in simple moralism. Instead, through a menagerie of passionate, obsessive, and deranged personae, he suggests that we are mysteries even to ourselves."—Buenos Aires Herald
“One of the truest depictions of dissociation and dysphoria I’ve read anywhere, all filtered through the strangeness of seeing oneself in the third person, refracted again and again. It isn’t a trans novel, necessarily, but it sure isn’t not.”—Bee, Pegasus Books (Berkeley, CA)
"A compelling balance of heady high concepts with pulp thrills...a welcome addition to Argentinian literature in translation—and to Weird fiction the world over."—Tobias Carroll, Reactor
"The mirror house of Bonomini’s collection throws up a multiplicity of reflections—not always flattering, but always revelatory."—Ancillary Review of Books
Product Info
First Published: May 7, 2024
Fiction
Paperback | 5.25 x 8 | 160 Pages
Rights: WE
978-1-945492-85-3