Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Avalovara is a novel centered around Abel's courtship of three women. He pursues the sophisticated and inaccessible Roos across Europe; falls in love with Cecilia, a carnal, compassionate hermaphrodite; and achieves a tender, erotic alliance with a woman known only by an ideogram. Avalovara is an extraordinary novel, both in its depiction of modern life and in its rigorous, puzzlelike structure visually represented by a spiral and a five-word palindrome.Synopsis
A work remarkable for both its form and execution, Avalovara belongs to the tradition of contemporary writing that Gregory Rabassa calls "the inventive novel." These novels include such works as Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch and Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar, and are "narratives where the author produces the raw materials and hands them over for the reader to give them shape or structure and sometimes meaning."
The protagonist's courtship of three women constitutes the main plot of Avalovara. He pursues the sophisticated and inaccessible Roos across Europe; falls in love with Cecília, a carnal, compassionate hermaphrodite; and achieves a tender, erotic alliance with a woman known only by an ideogram. Reinforcing the inventive nature of Lins's masterpiece, the action develops within a rigorous, puzzlelike design-visually represented by a spiral and a five-word palindrome.About the Author
Born in Brazil in 1924, Osman Lins received many literary prizes in his lifetime, including the Coehlo Neto Prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. In addition to Avalovara, he wrote five other books, including Nine, Novena and The Queen of the Prisons of Greece.
Boston Phoenix
Lins's masterpiece Avalovara (1973) yokes together mathematics and mysticism in a love story that, like Lolita, is an indispensible modern primer of desire....Raising eroticism to a cosmic pitch, Lins rejects the restrictive world of family, religion, law, and power, embracing the transcendent realms of intelligence and artisitic design.
Editorials
Boston Phoenix
Lins's masterpiece Avalovara (1973) yokes together mathematics and mysticism in a love story that, like Lolita, is an indispensible modern primer of desire....Raising eroticism to a cosmic pitch, Lins rejects the restrictive world of family, religion, law, and power, embracing the transcendent realms of intelligence and artisitic design.Washington Post
One of the most majestic prose stylists Latin America has ever produced.Mateo Pardo
Avalovara rivals Lezama Lima's Paradiso in capricious difficulty and Cortázar's Hopscotch in its gimmickry, but behind all of its intricate mystification there is a simple and powerful tale.— Nation