Cobra and Maitreya

by Severo Sarduy, Suzanne Jill Levine (Translator), James McCourt (Introduction)

Overview

The late Severo Sarduy was one of the most outrageous and baroque of the Latin American Boom writers of the sixties and seventies, and here bound back to back are his two finest creations. Cobra (1972) recounts the tale of a transvestite named Cobra, star of the Lyrical Theater of the Dolls, whose obsession is to transform his/her body. She is assisted in her metamorphosis by the Madam and Pup, Cobra's dwarfish double. They too change shape, through the violent ceremonies of a motorcycle gang, into a sect of Tibetan lamas seeking to revive Tantric Buddhism.

Maitreya (1978) continues the theme of metamorphosis, this time in the person of Luis Leng, a humble Cuban-Chinese cook, who becomes a reincarnation of Buddha. Through Leng, Sarduy traces the metamorphosis of two hitherto incomparable societies, Tibet at the moment of the Chinese invasion, and Cuba at the moment of revolution. Transgressing genres and genders, reveling in literal and figurative transvestism, these two novels are among the most daring achievements of postmodern Latin American fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564780768
Publisher:	Dalkey Archive Press
Publication date:	12/28/2005
Pages:	273
Sales rank:	327,246
Product dimensions:	5.56(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Having translated Manuel Puig, Julio Cortazar, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and other notable authors, Suzanne Jill Levine is one of the most highly regarded translators of contemporary Latin American literature. She is a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the author of The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction.

James McCourt is the author of Mawrdew Czgowchwz, Time Remaining, Delancey s Way, Now Voyagers: The Night Sea Journey and Queer Street. He has contributed to the Yale Review, The New Yorker, and the Paris Review. He lives in New York City and Washington, D.C.

What People are Saying About This

Richard Howard

"Severo Sarbuy has everything...So brilliant, so funny, and so bewildering apt in his borrowings, his variations, as well as in his inventions, his findings, he leaves one breathless, like a shot of rum."

Editorial Reviews

"Maitreya [is] a mesmerizing literary mosaic fusing the memories of a Caribbean sense of place with a fluid existential state where transmigration is commonplace." --Juana Ponce de Leon, Voice Literary Supplement

Dalkey Archive Press

"Sarduy rendered the epiphany of the body luminous, where the pleasure of the void meets the furious fire of the world." --Washington Post Book World

Dalkey Archive Press

"Cobra is composed of jewel-like sentences that unfold like paper origami in convoluted proliferation.... Maitreya is one of the most radiant texts I have ever read, and the translation by Suzanne Jill Levine appears as seamless as a single ocean wave, spilling us from high elegance to low camp and back again without pause." --Bruce Benderson, Cups

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher

This volume combines two avante-garde novels, published in 1972 and 1978, respectively, by this Cuban expatriate author. Both deal with a main character who undergoes a metamorphosis.

Library Journal