Asylum (el. knyga) (skaityta knyga) | André Alexis | knygos.lt

Aprašymas

Asylum, the long-awaited new novel by André Alexis, is a Russian doll of a book, thick with layers and twists. For starters, there’s its dedication to Harry Mathews, a member of the merry band of mathematical and literary pranksters known as Oulipo. Then there’s Mark Ford, its very unreliable narrator. From the remove of a self-imposed exile at a Tuscan monastery, Ford relates the ups and mostly downs of a loosely connected group of intellectuals, politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa in the 1980s.

As for the plot of this largely interior, contemplative tale: Everything and nothing much at all happens over the course of almost 500 pages. That is, except for a sexual scandal involving a squeaky-clean veteran politician, a pork-barrel plan to build a “civilized” mega-prison out of imported marble and an extramarital affair that has violent consequences. Throw in long passages written in French (sans translation) and name-check Thomas Aquinas and G.W.F. Hegel, and you have Alexis’s peculiar – and compelling – brand of eggheaded playfulness. Even the title is a riddle: Can a madhouse also be a place of sanctuary?