Suzanne Jill Levin translates José Donoso's The Lizard's Tail

Available October, 2011: José Donoso's novel, The Lizard’s Tale, published by Northwestern Univ. ed. by Julio Ortega. translated from Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine (Faculty 2013, Puebla)!

"In Barcelona, elderly painter Antonio ­Muñoz-Roa recalls an earlier time when he dropped out of a popular art movement in the fad-crazed city and fled with his cousin/lover Luisa to Dors, “the most remote village in the world,” with its mystical hilltop castle, Calatrava. There he defends its medieval beauty to the locals, who loathe their stone hovels and crave the modernity of apartment living. But the tide is more than he can stem. Friends of friends start coming, and then an endless flood turns Dors into a tourist center with all the “attractions” Muñoz-Roa had feared—crowds, hotels, and shops, leading finally to madness and crime. Donoso, author of 1970’s acclaimed The Obscene Bird of Night, was the Chilean member of the highly touted Latin American Boom, a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s, so it’s not hard to see a personal parallel in this sad, ironic tale of the loss of Spain’s innocence to commercialism. VERDICT Written as a draft in 1973 and not found until after Donoso’s death in 1996, this highly relevant parable about the vulgarization of art is a wonderful read, handily translated by veteran Donoso authority Levine."—Jack Shreve, Allegany College of Maryland, Cumberland

Library Journal review here