You're an Animal, Viskovitz
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In this wickedly hilarious collection of fables, Alessandro Boffa introduces us to Viskovitz and his never-ending search for his true love, Ljuba. As he changes from a lovelorn lion to a jealous finch, from a confused dung beetle to an enlightened police dog, Viskovitz embraces his metamorphoses with wry humor and an oftentimes painful sense of self.
As an ant, Viskovitz fights his way to the top where his egotism calls on the colony to create a monument to his greatness out of a piece of bread. As a sponge, he is horrified by the inbreeding in his family—“I’m my own mother-in-law!!!”—and yearns for a change in current so he can mate with Ljuba, who lies downstream. As a mantis, he asks his mother what his father was like, only to hear, “Crunchy. A bit salty. High in fiber.” Unfortunately, when he meets Ljuba shortly thereafter, he follows his father’s fate. And as a scorpion, his uncontrollably deadly efficiency meets its match in Ljuba and finds “no way to escape this intolerable, sinister happiness.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this delightful, clever debut collection of interrelated tales, Boffa employs a variety of living creatures to demonstrate human foibles and folly. Rapidly morphing from larva to ant to Buddhist police dog, Viskovitz, the book's charming protagonist, enjoys a variety of incarnations that allow him to thoroughly explore the human condition. In one tale, Viskovitz assumes parrot form and engages in a maddening yet hilarious dialogue with other parrots that resembles Zen-tinged slapstick. He learns the perils of love and lust as an elk when, assuming the mantle of "Elkness," his waking hours are spent defending females, leaving no time for propagating the next alpha male. In the Mojave Desert, Viskovitz the scorpion adopts the patois of a western gunslinger, leaving a trail of dead scorpions in his wake along with dry observations about the nature of survival. Over all these stories, the figure of Ljuba looms. Whether shark rat, praying mantis or sow, she shines with a luminous beauty as Viskovitz's romantic beacon. Seemingly doomed to pursue her, he encounters her in every form, and true animal passion boils on the page as she bewitches and inspires him. Boffa's writing crackles with humor ("What was daddy like?" "Crunchy, a bit salty, rich in fiber") and wonderfully worded descriptions, lovingly translated by Casey (author of Spartina, winner of the 1989 National Book Award for fiction). Boffa's training as a biologist is readily apparent; the precise physiological details he provides for each embodiment of his protagonist rings with technical precision. Whimsically combining scientific lingo and specific biological argot with candid vernacular, he creates a series of engaging dichotomies of high and low, sacred and profane.
