R.M. Koster was born in Brooklyn and has lived in Panama since 1957. He is the author of five novels and one work of contemporary history, and has had parallel careers as a university professor, reporter, and political activist. His shorter work has been published in the New Republic, Harper’s, and Connoisseur, among others.
The Dissertation (Tinieblas Trilogy #2)
by R. M. Koster
Paperback
(Reprint)
$17.95
- ISBN-13: 9781468301182
- Publisher: The Overlook Press
- Publication date: 10/29/2013
- Series: Tinieblas Trilogy , #2
- Edition description: Reprint
- Pages: 448
- Product dimensions: 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)
- Age Range: 18Years
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The second book in R.M. Koster's highly acclaimed Tinieblas trilogy (following The Prince), The Dissertation is the story of—and a story by—Camilo Fuertes.
To fulfill his Ph.D. requirement, Fuertes decides to write about his father, the martyred president of Tinieblas, a country in Latin America. We follow Leon as he winds his twisted path through delinquency, learning, bravery, and incest to the presidency. At once a powerful vision of Latin American history and a brilliant parody of the academic form—complete with endnotes!—The Dissertation is an essential postmodern novel in the tradition of Vonnegut, Barth and Nabokov, ready to be embraced by a new generation of readers.
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Publishers Weekly
★ 09/09/2013A careful fake is better than the truth, according to fictional Banana Republic president León Fuertes, and so it is with Koster’s 1975 novel masquerading as a doctoral dissertation, reissued after four decades and still fresh, funny, and disturbingly relevant. Half text, half footnotes, this second volume in a trilogy (after The Prince) about the imaginary Latin American country of Tinieblas purports to be the annotated biography of the leader, as written for academic credit by his son, Camilo, whose sources include interviews with dead people. Camilo traces the family roots back to Rosalba Fuertes, first of several Fuertes women intent on producing a future president. Convicted of witchcraft, León’s mother, Rebeca, leaves Tinieblas, but she returns, maid and child in tow. From con man to candidate, León displays the inherited family traits of artistry, ingenuity, chutzpah, and carnal appetites. Like any good politician, he is a master of compartmentalization. Likewise, Koster displays a wide range of literary styles, from magic realism to satire, combining insight and shtick (in one Kafkaesque moment, Rebeca wakes up as a man). León’s youth is captured in a slide show, while a slow-motion baseball game encapsulates U.S./Latin American relations. Brooklyn, N.Y.–born, Ivy League–educated, longtime Panama resident Koster portrays Latin America with a comedian’s sense of timing, a scholar’s sense of history, and a native’s fond despair. (Nov.)
From the Publisher
"A careful fake is better than the truth,according to fictional Banana Republic president León Fuertes, and so it is with
Koster’s 1975 novel masquerading as a doctoral dissertation, reissued after four decades and still fresh, funny, and disturbingly relevant. Brooklyn, N.Y.–born, Ivy League–
educated, longtime Panama resident Koster portrays Latin America with a comedian’s sense of timing, a scholar’s sense of history,
and a native’s fond despair." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"It gave me a lot of pleasure. As with Pale Fire, it's the [end]notes I cherish and will read and reread." —Anthony Burgess
"One of the few books of the past 20 years that deserves to be called astonishing. It is a brilliant novel, structurally a marvel and, in all, a demonstration of elan as that quality seldom is experienced in a work of fiction." —Des Moines Sunday Register