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Psi z ráje
Nejznámějším Posseho dílem je román Psi z ráje (Los perros del paraíso), za níž obdržel cenu Premio Rómulo Gallegos a který byl přeložen již do 13 jazyků (česky Odeon, Praha, 1993). Tento postmoderní román o čtyřech dílech popisuje „alternativní historii“ objevení amerického kontinentu a vzniku novověku. Vystupuje zde Kryštof Kolumbus, Ferdinand II. Aragonský, Isabela Kastilská, Aztékové a Inkové, ale také několik postav (či jejich karikatur) z pozdějších období dějin. „Psi z ráje“ – neškodní holí psíci – zde symbolicky stojí v protikladu k zuřivým ovčákům conquistadorů. Román tak nepřímo poukazuje na genocidu původního latinskoamerického obyvatelstva.
260 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
16 people are currently reading
315 people want to read
About the author
Abel Posse
44 books20 followersAbel Posse nació en la provincia de Córdoba. Creció y se educó en Buenos Aires. Diplomático de carrera, vivió varios años en Moscú, Lima, Venecia, París, Israel y Praga, donde actualmente se desempeña como embajador argentino en la República Checa. Es autor de nueve novelas, entre ellas Los perros del paraíso, que obtuvo en 1987 el V Premio Internacional Rómulo Gallegos, máximo galardón literario de Hispanoamérica. Su obra ha sido traducida al inglés, francés, italiano, alemán, portugués, holandés, sueco, checo, ruso y estonio. Con su novela El largo atardecer del caminante ganó el concurso Extremadura-América 92, convocado por la Comisión Española del V Centenario y dotado con 150.000 dólares de premio.
http://www.literatura.org/Posse/Posse...
Abel Parentini Posse, born Córdoba, Argentina, on 7 January 1934, is an Argentine diplomat and writer. He was designated at a diplomatic mission in Venice by Alejandro Agustín Lanusse in 1973[1] and hold similar offices during the following Argentine governments, both military and civilian. He was briefly considered as a possible foreign minister of Néstor Kirchner by the beginning of his mandate in 2003,[1] but the role was finally designated to Rafael Bielsa.
Parentini's 1983 work Los perros del paraíso won the Venezuelan Rómulo Gallegos Prize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Posse
http://www.literatura.org/Posse/Posse...
Abel Parentini Posse, born Córdoba, Argentina, on 7 January 1934, is an Argentine diplomat and writer. He was designated at a diplomatic mission in Venice by Alejandro Agustín Lanusse in 1973[1] and hold similar offices during the following Argentine governments, both military and civilian. He was briefly considered as a possible foreign minister of Néstor Kirchner by the beginning of his mandate in 2003,[1] but the role was finally designated to Rafael Bielsa.
Parentini's 1983 work Los perros del paraíso won the Venezuelan Rómulo Gallegos Prize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Posse
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 23, 2024
If Dogs of Paradise novel belongs to the magic realism then there is much more magic than realism. And its convoluted magic is mostly on the side of a frilly farce…
This is the Aztec world:
It is hard to describe Dogs of Paradise – it reads as if Aztec pictures and discovery of America were painted by Max Ernst: macabre and surreal and chatoyant.
It isn’t just a voyage across the ocean – it is a fantastic journey across time and space, it is a voluptuous journey across love and sexuality, a timeless journey across life and death.
The dogs of paradise are sunset-scarlet in colour and I believe the novel was written with the angel’s quill.
We keep looking for heaven but we always find something quite different.
This is the Aztec world:
Frenzy of life. Muted song of warriors training in ritual ball games. From high atop the temple of Tlaloc, the somber rhythm of drums and the single, profound and futile howl of the sacrificed warrior whose heart the priests, sinister divine toilers tore out to deposit in the hollowed bosom of the god Chac-Mool.
Vendors peddling flowers. Fluttering of caged toucans. Pirouetting monkeys in the read tree limbs where they are displayed for sale. A penetrating odor of salsa picante.
It is hard to describe Dogs of Paradise – it reads as if Aztec pictures and discovery of America were painted by Max Ernst: macabre and surreal and chatoyant.
It isn’t just a voyage across the ocean – it is a fantastic journey across time and space, it is a voluptuous journey across love and sexuality, a timeless journey across life and death.
He was sent in search of gold and daemons, and he comes to us with angels’ feathers!
The dogs of paradise are sunset-scarlet in colour and I believe the novel was written with the angel’s quill.
We keep looking for heaven but we always find something quite different.
October 29, 2020
“As a descendant of Isaiah, the admiral [Christopher Columbus] knew that he was the bearer of an awesome responsibility: to return to the place where that trap of consciousness, that net woven with two threads of Space and Time, no longer ruled.”
Dogs in estrus, dogs of dogma, dogs of barbarian mange, schools of dogfish, dogs on the dinner table of the Aztecs, the mute dogs of paradise itself.
À la Rikki Ducornet’s Tetralogy of Elements (and his linguistic style is reminiscent of hers too), Argentinian writer Abel Posse separates his novel into four parts: first the European air pregnant with destabilization, then the inquisitorial fire of a rising king and queen, then the water water everywhere of Columbus’ voyages, and finally the earth that Columbus mistakes in his prophet-delusional mind as the one true Eden. The historical meeting of these two worlds is a convergence of misplaced faith and bias confirmation. Columbus and some of his cronies are convinced that the Aztecs are angels: “…the only place one finds naked angels is in the deepest heart of the heavens. […] The admiral was jubilant. The nakedness was irrefutable proof.” While the Aztecs are convinced that Columbus and his people are “gods from the sea.”
Earlier, the Aztecs predict those gods will arrive soon, and they’re certain the gods “are driven by infinite kindness; they will take the bread from their own mouths to satisfy our children’s hunger. […] They are incapable of bringing death: they detest war. […] They worship a book written by sages and poets. The god they adore is a small man who was beaten and tortured before he was put to death by soldiers. They identify with the weak. They love the weak!” Meanwhile, the gods are packing their tools, including the inquisitorial “pulleys, Neapolitan boots with compartment for boiling oil, two cheap sets of ritual cap and robe for victims of the stake, Solingen nail pullers, molar crackers, testicle roasters, several pairs of Chinese rats for breeding stock. Also pickaxes for the ecclesiastical patrols that will have to demolish intihuatanas and other heathen idols.”
After being certain of this Eden, Columbus later finds the Tree of Life, staying among its branches in a hammock, nude as creation and with the commandment that everyone else, including the men of the cloth, must go nude too, because clothes are an indication of the fall. Not everyone is comfortable with this, of course, and further agitation brews when Columbus instructs everyone to do nothing, that this place is devoid of death and now is the timeless time for eternal being rather than doing. It’s in this way that Columbus is portrayed as guilty of omission (rather than the sin-commissioner of genocide), literally sitting back in his careless indolence as the others disobey his order of no order and create their own order, which involves rape, theft, enslavement, and all the other constituents of merciless pillaging. (Whether Columbus was a genocidal maniac or not, it’s clear that, as he’s told, “Your accomplishment will not be originality, but publicity. More than that…they have sailed near here several times in their strange boats.”)
Instead of the sinuous sentences of maximalism, Posse opts for prose that’s sometimes composed of sentence fragments, including the occasional one- and two-word sentences, almost in a cut-up-like fashion, such as this description of a ship’s sails: “Enormous, benevolent udders swelled against the dawn. Feminine power, the ying, of sail. Inhaled breath, pregnancy, invisible wind transformed into power and direction. Angel trapped in a white pillowcase. Benign god indulging the naïve cleverness of humankind.” As you can see, the style is lush and evocative, and not without well-placed anachronisms. After about a quarter of the way in, the prose descends a notch or two, yet the work remains astute and accomplished.
To give a taste of the anachronisms, when the culinary curiosities of the Aztec are being described, there’s eventually this: “In a row, pierced from butt to snout, chasing each other down the shaft of the white-hot spit, a dozen hairless dogs, done to a crisp; they look like boys from the provinces who had risked an evening with the Marquis de Sade.” Or when Columbus meets for the first time with the queen and lies on the ground, unable to ejaculate in the regular way but rather his sperm courses through his body, then Posse the narrator comments: “Today, in the light of psychoanalytical knowledge, it would not be difficult to explain the incident: the plebeian Colón suffered a genital block in the presence of royalty. His was an inhibition based in class inferiority.” On the same page, even Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier’s fiction is briefly scrutinized as a juxtaposition. But these postmodern enhancements, if you will, are not overly frequent, and become rarer after the stage has been set, as it were, and Columbus sets sail.
While there’s magic in the realism, it’s not in heavy supply, at least in this reader’s eyes, yet there are indeed intriguing moments that add static to the quotidian, such as Columbus’ webbed feet, suggesting that he was an amphibio-human meant for the seas; the ships from other times that he witnesses in the distance, such as the Mayflower; a “menstral wind” that flows over his ships and afflicts everyone with an orgy-inducing lust, etc.
Out of Posse’s entire oeuvre, which consists of 15 novels, only two have been translated into English. Furthermore, Los perros del paraíso (originally written in 1983, translated in 1989) is part of a thematic trilogy exploring the history of early America. The first installment is Daimón (originally written in 1978, translated in 1992), and it tells the tale of the infamous conquistador Lope de Aguirre who went down the Amazon in search of El Dorado. Yet the third part of the trilogy, El largo atardecer del caminante (1992), about the Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, remains untranslated, the title roughly translating to The Long Sunset of the Wayfarer, and according to at least one blurb translated through Google, it seems to be a work that shirks anachronisms and leans more toward verisimilitude.
Overall, with The Dogs of Paradise’s time-hopping and knack for anachronisms, its rotten history wrought in mellifluous and sensuous prose, the novel is a delight to hold and behold, so I’m looking forward to reading Daimon and hope that one day the literary community wakes up to itself and starts translating more of Posse’s fiction.
Dogs in estrus, dogs of dogma, dogs of barbarian mange, schools of dogfish, dogs on the dinner table of the Aztecs, the mute dogs of paradise itself.
À la Rikki Ducornet’s Tetralogy of Elements (and his linguistic style is reminiscent of hers too), Argentinian writer Abel Posse separates his novel into four parts: first the European air pregnant with destabilization, then the inquisitorial fire of a rising king and queen, then the water water everywhere of Columbus’ voyages, and finally the earth that Columbus mistakes in his prophet-delusional mind as the one true Eden. The historical meeting of these two worlds is a convergence of misplaced faith and bias confirmation. Columbus and some of his cronies are convinced that the Aztecs are angels: “…the only place one finds naked angels is in the deepest heart of the heavens. […] The admiral was jubilant. The nakedness was irrefutable proof.” While the Aztecs are convinced that Columbus and his people are “gods from the sea.”
Earlier, the Aztecs predict those gods will arrive soon, and they’re certain the gods “are driven by infinite kindness; they will take the bread from their own mouths to satisfy our children’s hunger. […] They are incapable of bringing death: they detest war. […] They worship a book written by sages and poets. The god they adore is a small man who was beaten and tortured before he was put to death by soldiers. They identify with the weak. They love the weak!” Meanwhile, the gods are packing their tools, including the inquisitorial “pulleys, Neapolitan boots with compartment for boiling oil, two cheap sets of ritual cap and robe for victims of the stake, Solingen nail pullers, molar crackers, testicle roasters, several pairs of Chinese rats for breeding stock. Also pickaxes for the ecclesiastical patrols that will have to demolish intihuatanas and other heathen idols.”
After being certain of this Eden, Columbus later finds the Tree of Life, staying among its branches in a hammock, nude as creation and with the commandment that everyone else, including the men of the cloth, must go nude too, because clothes are an indication of the fall. Not everyone is comfortable with this, of course, and further agitation brews when Columbus instructs everyone to do nothing, that this place is devoid of death and now is the timeless time for eternal being rather than doing. It’s in this way that Columbus is portrayed as guilty of omission (rather than the sin-commissioner of genocide), literally sitting back in his careless indolence as the others disobey his order of no order and create their own order, which involves rape, theft, enslavement, and all the other constituents of merciless pillaging. (Whether Columbus was a genocidal maniac or not, it’s clear that, as he’s told, “Your accomplishment will not be originality, but publicity. More than that…they have sailed near here several times in their strange boats.”)
Instead of the sinuous sentences of maximalism, Posse opts for prose that’s sometimes composed of sentence fragments, including the occasional one- and two-word sentences, almost in a cut-up-like fashion, such as this description of a ship’s sails: “Enormous, benevolent udders swelled against the dawn. Feminine power, the ying, of sail. Inhaled breath, pregnancy, invisible wind transformed into power and direction. Angel trapped in a white pillowcase. Benign god indulging the naïve cleverness of humankind.” As you can see, the style is lush and evocative, and not without well-placed anachronisms. After about a quarter of the way in, the prose descends a notch or two, yet the work remains astute and accomplished.
To give a taste of the anachronisms, when the culinary curiosities of the Aztec are being described, there’s eventually this: “In a row, pierced from butt to snout, chasing each other down the shaft of the white-hot spit, a dozen hairless dogs, done to a crisp; they look like boys from the provinces who had risked an evening with the Marquis de Sade.” Or when Columbus meets for the first time with the queen and lies on the ground, unable to ejaculate in the regular way but rather his sperm courses through his body, then Posse the narrator comments: “Today, in the light of psychoanalytical knowledge, it would not be difficult to explain the incident: the plebeian Colón suffered a genital block in the presence of royalty. His was an inhibition based in class inferiority.” On the same page, even Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier’s fiction is briefly scrutinized as a juxtaposition. But these postmodern enhancements, if you will, are not overly frequent, and become rarer after the stage has been set, as it were, and Columbus sets sail.
While there’s magic in the realism, it’s not in heavy supply, at least in this reader’s eyes, yet there are indeed intriguing moments that add static to the quotidian, such as Columbus’ webbed feet, suggesting that he was an amphibio-human meant for the seas; the ships from other times that he witnesses in the distance, such as the Mayflower; a “menstral wind” that flows over his ships and afflicts everyone with an orgy-inducing lust, etc.
Out of Posse’s entire oeuvre, which consists of 15 novels, only two have been translated into English. Furthermore, Los perros del paraíso (originally written in 1983, translated in 1989) is part of a thematic trilogy exploring the history of early America. The first installment is Daimón (originally written in 1978, translated in 1992), and it tells the tale of the infamous conquistador Lope de Aguirre who went down the Amazon in search of El Dorado. Yet the third part of the trilogy, El largo atardecer del caminante (1992), about the Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, remains untranslated, the title roughly translating to The Long Sunset of the Wayfarer, and according to at least one blurb translated through Google, it seems to be a work that shirks anachronisms and leans more toward verisimilitude.
Overall, with The Dogs of Paradise’s time-hopping and knack for anachronisms, its rotten history wrought in mellifluous and sensuous prose, the novel is a delight to hold and behold, so I’m looking forward to reading Daimon and hope that one day the literary community wakes up to itself and starts translating more of Posse’s fiction.
October 6, 2016
I had never heard of this author and novel until I discovered it at a sale in a library. I bought it for 1 euro, and that means my greatest literary return on investment ever. Posse's antichronological approach of Christopher Columbus's voyage to America is very convincing, this is really first class literature. Posse's wording of the unclear and dark motives of man is unique.
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April 13, 2020Odmah da se zna - „Psi raja“ su jedan sjajan roman. Pisan je pomalo neobičnim stilom (na granici groteske i humoreske). Autor koristi fraze i izraze današnjeg doba da bi opisao doba Kolumbovog otkrića Novog sveta. Na taj način on zapravo satirično prikazuje svet današnjice, uspon (svakog) fašizma, prikazuje kako i najlepše ideje unište neki grozni ljudi, kako je, na koncu, put u pakao popločan dobrim namerama, kako ljudi uništavaju rajeve, uspostavljaju diktature, kako se iza svega uvek krije interes krupnog kapitala…
„Debeli, beli čovek, verovatno najopasnije stvorenje na planeti“, napisao je Hanter S. Tompson jednom prilikom. Ova knjiga je ilustracija date izjave.
U pitanju je totalno blesav i iščašen pogled na to vreme koje nam pokazuje kako se malo toga promenilo. I dalje je sve isto, samo sada koristimo druge nazive za neke stvari.
Više o samoj knjizi možete pročitati na linku koji sledi, a ovu knjigu toplo preporučujem za čitanje: http://www.bookvar.rs/psi-raja-kako-j...
„Debeli, beli čovek, verovatno najopasnije stvorenje na planeti“, napisao je Hanter S. Tompson jednom prilikom. Ova knjiga je ilustracija date izjave.
U pitanju je totalno blesav i iščašen pogled na to vreme koje nam pokazuje kako se malo toga promenilo. I dalje je sve isto, samo sada koristimo druge nazive za neke stvari.
Više o samoj knjizi možete pročitati na linku koji sledi, a ovu knjigu toplo preporučujem za čitanje: http://www.bookvar.rs/psi-raja-kako-j...
April 13, 2022
Ganadora del Rómulo Gallegos de 1987, esta novela plantea una visión fantasiosa y casi mitológica sobre el Descubrimiento de América, hecha además desde la pespectiva de los españoles, concretamente las figuras de Cristóbal Colón, los Reyes Católicos y Bartolomé de las Casas, entre otros, y uniéndolos a través de la idea base de la búsqueda del Paraíso y con ello un puje entre el poder político del naciente imperio español y el fervor religioso de aquellos que consideraban estar encontrando algo que iba más allá del mundo terrenal. Maneja ideas muy interesantes, especialmente cuando juega con la historia añadiendo elementos deliberadamente anacrónicos o pasajes de fantasía como la posible exploración de Europa por parte de los pueblos originarios americanos. Por momentos, sin embargo, es una novela un tanto caótica que requiere paciencia por parte del lector ya que baraja todas sus ideas sin ceñirse a un único argumento, además de que en algunos pasajes el comentario moralista sobre la historia se me hizo tan evidente que me parecía ver al autor metido allí. Con todo es una muy buena novela y me ha animado incluso a buscar más textos de ficción sobre la Conquista.
December 15, 2025
Velice zajímavá kniha, která popisuje dvě, respektive tři dějové linky, jež se na první pohled zdají být oddělené. Nakonec však vše zapadne do sebe. Autor zde zajímavým způsobem vykresluje, jak mohla vypadat plavba a objevení Ameriky. Kniha byla opět sáhnutím mimo mé obvyklé žánry a znovu mě příjemně překvapila.
June 2, 2025
The Dogs of Paradise by Abel Posse is a frustrating and bewildering read, trying to juggle grand ideas without ever delivering on them. The narrative is a tangled mess, leaping from historical figure to historical figure without any real cohesion. The result is a book that feels more like a collection of random musings than a compelling, well-constructed story.
The characters are drawn in such a way that they feel more like abstractions than real people, lacking depth or emotional resonance. Posse’s attempt to weave historical references into the narrative ends up feeling forced and pretentious. Rather than enriching the story, the historical elements are thrown in haphazardly, contributing to the book’s sense of confusion and lack of direction.
Posse's prose, while ambitious, often tries too hard to appear intellectual but fails to engage the reader. It’s as though the book is more interested in showcasing its complexity than in telling a coherent, enjoyable story.
In the end, The Dogs of Paradise is bogged down by bizarre scenes and a lack of narrative clarity. It’s a book that loses its way and never quite finds its footing. Not a book I would recommend to anyone looking for a thought-provoking or enjoyable read.
This is the only book I’ve ever started and dropped after 150 pages, only to return to it years later, driven by the fact that it was the only book I’d ever started and dropped, and that thought nagged at me endlessly.
I regret doing so.
The characters are drawn in such a way that they feel more like abstractions than real people, lacking depth or emotional resonance. Posse’s attempt to weave historical references into the narrative ends up feeling forced and pretentious. Rather than enriching the story, the historical elements are thrown in haphazardly, contributing to the book’s sense of confusion and lack of direction.
Posse's prose, while ambitious, often tries too hard to appear intellectual but fails to engage the reader. It’s as though the book is more interested in showcasing its complexity than in telling a coherent, enjoyable story.
In the end, The Dogs of Paradise is bogged down by bizarre scenes and a lack of narrative clarity. It’s a book that loses its way and never quite finds its footing. Not a book I would recommend to anyone looking for a thought-provoking or enjoyable read.
This is the only book I’ve ever started and dropped after 150 pages, only to return to it years later, driven by the fact that it was the only book I’d ever started and dropped, and that thought nagged at me endlessly.
I regret doing so.
August 6, 2023
El principio es dinámico e interesante. Posteriormente, la novela pierde fuerza, aunque el desenlace mejora el desarrollo.
July 12, 2025
Novela histórica sobre el descubrimiento de América, con especial énfasis en el ascenso erótico de los Reyes Católicos, y la juventud mística de Cristóbal Colón. Posse adereza la historia con deseo, ambición y violencia, a través de una prosa fluida llena de tintes fantásticos, metáforas y otras reflexiones, resultando una mezcla perfecta. Al leer sobre cantidad de personajes interesantes me dediqué a googlear sus vidas, percatándome que Posse fue más fiel a la verdad de lo que parecía, otorgándole al relato un mayor valor mientras lo terminaba.
Lo del perro Bercerillo es simplemente notable.
Ya me hago asiduo a los desvaríos de este argentino.
Lo del perro Bercerillo es simplemente notable.
Ya me hago asiduo a los desvaríos de este argentino.
April 13, 2019
Read it for a Spanish lit class years ago, and I remember HATING this book. Retrospectively, I can admit part of it was mid-semester stress. But that didn't stop me from loving the other stories from the same genre of rewriting-the-colonization-of-the-Americas that semester (cough LLANTO: NOVELAS IMPOSIBLES cough). (Sorry profe, I don't remember the name of the movement!)
August 16, 2020
„ - Purtroppo c'era il Paradiso...!”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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