The Dissertation
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This novel posing as a dissertation on León Fuertes, the fictional president of a made-up Banana Republic is “still fresh, funny, and disturbingly relevant” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
To fulfill his PhD requirement, Camilo Fuertes decides to write about his father León, the martyred president of Tinieblas, a small country in Latin America. As Camilo traces his family’s roots, we follow León along his twisted path through delinquency, learning, lust, and bravery to his historic position of leadership.
At once a powerful vision of Latin American history and a brilliant parody of the academic form—complete with endnotes—The Dissertation is the second novel in Koster’s acclaimed Tinieblas trilogy, and an essential postmodern novel in the tradition of Vonnegut, Barth, and Nabokov.
“One of the few books of the past 20 years that deserves to be called astonishing. It is a brilliant novel, structurally a marvel and, in all, a demonstration of elan as that quality seldom is experienced in a work of fiction.” —The Des Moines Register
“Longtime Panama resident Koster portrays Latin America with a comedian’s sense of timing, a scholar’s sense of history, and a native’s fond despair.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Koster is that rare thing: a writer from the heart, passionate and uncompromising.” —John le Carré
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A careful fake is better than the truth, according to fictional Banana Republic president Le n Fuertes, and so it is with Koster's 1975 novel masquerading as a doctoral dissertation, reissued after four decades and still fresh, funny, and disturbingly relevant. Half text, half footnotes, this second volume in a trilogy (after The Prince) about the imaginary Latin American country of Tinieblas purports to be the annotated biography of the leader, as written for academic credit by his son, Camilo, whose sources include interviews with dead people. Camilo traces the family roots back to Rosalba Fuertes, first of several Fuertes women intent on producing a future president. Convicted of witchcraft, Le n's mother, Rebeca, leaves Tinieblas, but she returns, maid and child in tow. From con man to candidate, Le n displays the inherited family traits of artistry, ingenuity, chutzpah, and carnal appetites. Like any good politician, he is a master of compartmentalization. Likewise, Koster displays a wide range of literary styles, from magic realism to satire, combining insight and shtick (in one Kafkaesque moment, Rebeca wakes up as a man). Le n's youth is captured in a slide show, while a slow-motion baseball game encapsulates U.S./Latin American relations. Brooklyn, N.Y. born, Ivy League educated, longtime Panama resident Koster portrays Latin America with a comedian's sense of timing, a scholar's sense of history, and a native's fond despair.
