Hell Has No Limits (Sun & Moon Classics, 101)

by José Donoso

Book Overview

Una novela intensa sobre los l?mites inciertos de la identidad, con el sello de uno de los grandes novelistas chilenos del siglo XX Juego impl?cito con la ambig?edad de los sexos, esta novela breve e... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1557132755
• ISBN13: 9781557132758
• Release Date: December 1995
• Publisher: Sun & Moon Pr
• Length: 142 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Quick and excellent.

I don't normally read fiction, but I really enjoyed this book. It's an intense, quick read, excellently written and excellently translated. The themes of violence, sexuality, gender, power, are subtly but thoroughly explored.

Of dogs and whores

"Hell Has No Limits" is a stunning novel by Chilean author Jose Donoso. The book has been translated from Spanish into an effective English by Suzanne Jill Levine. This is a grim, tragic story about the lives of the residents of the doomed town of El Olivo.The story focuses on La Manuela, a drag queen who owns a brothel, and his/her daughter, Japonesita (the story of Japonesita's conception is told in a series of vivid flashbacks). As Donoso peels back the layers from these and other memorable characters, he reveals a twisted story of lust, homophobia, violence, sexual ambiguity, and shattered dreams. And always in the background are the whores of El Olvido and the sinister black dogs owned by the powerful Don Alonso. Donoso's remarkable mastery of language (as translated by Levine) perfectly complements this gripping story. If you are a fan of Latin American fiction, or if you are interested in gender themes in literature, you won't want to miss this trip to "Hell."

Una lucha con(tra) los géneros

José Donoso's "El lugar sin límites" drops its reader into Estación El Olivo, a town spiraling towards oblivion in the middle of the vineyards of Middle Chile. Narrated though a series of interior monologues, dialogue, and third-person narration, switching between past and present tense, Donoso's text refuses to "gender" itself: unlike its protagonist la Manuela, the narrative never affixes itself to a single identity. By means of this narrative, Donoso depicts the sad and brutal tale of la Manuela, a transvestite dancer who desperately wishes to affirm her identity as "the great Manuela," raging against the seemingly ineluctable oblivion which awaits him, Manuel González Astica, by remaining in the village. In order to maintain her identity, la Manuela must continually repeat her defining performance, a gypsy dance performed in a tattered and fading percale dress. However, as the town's inhabitants leave for better economic opportunities down the longitudinal highway, la Manuela remains in the brothel with her obstinate and naively hopeful daughter la Japonesita, watching her audience dwindle. Her last chance to perform her dance presents itself in the character of Pancho Vega, a hyper-macho truck driver, who, in a confused rage of homosexual panic, has threatened to rape both la Manuela and la Japonesita. Bleak and beautiful, "El lugar sin límites" exposes the inevitable violence of the procrustean bed of (borrowing Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's phrase) "compulsory heterosexuality."

Lo mejor de Donoso

El Lugar sin limites es una de las mejores historias de José Donoso, en la cual nos narra la vida de varios personajes en decadencia, que vuelan en libertad pero se topan con una realidad que los confronta y los destruye una excelente obra de la literatura Latinoamericana