What do you think?
Rate this book
The Redemption of the Cannibal Woman and Other Stories
four stories, Argentina, tr Alberto Manguel
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
156 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1993
28 people want to read
About the author
Marco Denevi
74 books51 followersMarco Denevi (May 12, 1922 in Sáenz Peña, Buenos Aires – December 12, 1998) was an Argentine award-winning author of novels and short stories, as well as a lawyer and journalist. His work is characterized by its originiality and depth, as well as a criticism of human incompetence. His first work, a mystery called Rosaura a las diez (1955), was a Kraft award winner and a bestseller. In 1964, it was translated into English as Rosa at Ten O'Clock. Other famous works of his include Los expedientes (1957), Ceremonia Secreta (1960), El cuarto de la noche (1962), and Falsificaciones (1966).
He is less known as an essayist, but he also cultivated this genre with his República de Trapalanda (1989), a late work, in which he takes on Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's view of the Argentine republic.
He was born in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and at a young age he began playing the piano and reading. He graduated from college in 1939, and did not receive his law degree until 1956.
In 1987 he was inducted into the Argentine Academy of Letters.
He is less known as an essayist, but he also cultivated this genre with his República de Trapalanda (1989), a late work, in which he takes on Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's view of the Argentine republic.
He was born in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and at a young age he began playing the piano and reading. He graduated from college in 1939, and did not receive his law degree until 1956.
In 1987 he was inducted into the Argentine Academy of Letters.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 21, 2008
This book appeared on the shelf at Book Mark Cafe, where I was working. I suspected a customer had ordered it, decided not to buy it and that we had been unable to return it to the publisher. The front cover probably intimidated the person who had been planning to buy it. I can picture him at the register. "I'm here to pick up a book. The name's Jones."
"Jones? Here you are, Mr. Jones."
"Thank you."
"That'll be eight-seventy-nine."
"Oh. Oh. Oh." [Sorry, Goodreads readers. I can't make that quotation end with a quotation mark. The result is continually ""." Let's see if """ has kept its quotation marks...Yep!]
The customer leaves it on the desk and returns to his creme brulee. (Book Mark Cafe was no mere book store with a cafe. It was a full-fledged French restaurant with a book store.)
Whoever has been about to ring up the book puts it in the returns box and whoever deals with returns finds we're stuck with the book and puts it in a to-be-shelved pile.
I found it one day while shelving. It was a thin little book with a black and white cover which appeared to be an image from a TV screen of a homoerotic movie. Someone in the picture is about to put his money where his mouth is. It must have shocked the customer who'd been expecting a book of cutting-edge stories.
It was my luck to find the book. I opened it up and read a paragraph. I realized this was the sort of writing I live for: Elegant, rather mysterious, a bit austere and dealing with moonlight.
I think the publisher is Verso, but if it isn't, it looks like one of Verso's little volumes. [I've checked Goodreads. Passport Books is the publisher.] The paper is cream, the font stylishly straightforward.
Marco Denevi is virtually unknown in the United States. I imagine THE REDEMPTION OF THE CANNIBAL WOMAN is hard to find. It came to me like one of those dreams where you trip over a log and your arm shoots up. You wake, but not completely, and fall into the arms of Morpheus.
"Jones? Here you are, Mr. Jones."
"Thank you."
"That'll be eight-seventy-nine."
"Oh. Oh. Oh." [Sorry, Goodreads readers. I can't make that quotation end with a quotation mark. The result is continually ""." Let's see if """ has kept its quotation marks...Yep!]
The customer leaves it on the desk and returns to his creme brulee. (Book Mark Cafe was no mere book store with a cafe. It was a full-fledged French restaurant with a book store.)
Whoever has been about to ring up the book puts it in the returns box and whoever deals with returns finds we're stuck with the book and puts it in a to-be-shelved pile.
I found it one day while shelving. It was a thin little book with a black and white cover which appeared to be an image from a TV screen of a homoerotic movie. Someone in the picture is about to put his money where his mouth is. It must have shocked the customer who'd been expecting a book of cutting-edge stories.
It was my luck to find the book. I opened it up and read a paragraph. I realized this was the sort of writing I live for: Elegant, rather mysterious, a bit austere and dealing with moonlight.
I think the publisher is Verso, but if it isn't, it looks like one of Verso's little volumes. [I've checked Goodreads. Passport Books is the publisher.] The paper is cream, the font stylishly straightforward.
Marco Denevi is virtually unknown in the United States. I imagine THE REDEMPTION OF THE CANNIBAL WOMAN is hard to find. It came to me like one of those dreams where you trip over a log and your arm shoots up. You wake, but not completely, and fall into the arms of Morpheus.
June 9, 2019
Marco Denevi is an Argentine writer translated into English by Alberto Manguel. The stories take place in Buenos Aires, but I forgot at the beginning of one of the stories and thought it was Paris for a moment. Maybe that is not a mistake. Buenos Aires reads like a seedy Paris.
There are four short stories, my favourite is Letter to Gianfranco. What I love about these stories is that they are filled with beautiful language. The plot is almost unimportant. It is about the moment, and experiencing that moment fully, sensually, mentally, emotionally. There is little dialogue, only what is needed. He describes it best in a line from Letters to Gianfranco, "Because you enjoy that ambiguity that, pointing at the same time to both reality and the imagination, lies at the root of all literature?" Ambiguity is what he does best, leading the reader on, thinking one thing and ending up somewhere else, but not without clues along the way.
There are four short stories, my favourite is Letter to Gianfranco. What I love about these stories is that they are filled with beautiful language. The plot is almost unimportant. It is about the moment, and experiencing that moment fully, sensually, mentally, emotionally. There is little dialogue, only what is needed. He describes it best in a line from Letters to Gianfranco, "Because you enjoy that ambiguity that, pointing at the same time to both reality and the imagination, lies at the root of all literature?" Ambiguity is what he does best, leading the reader on, thinking one thing and ending up somewhere else, but not without clues along the way.
May 5, 2007
Argentinian writer with many voices, much sadism. Unique stories and a small but worthy introduction by the author.
December 5, 2010
Another great Argentinian writer!
June 21, 2024
I have a habit of making notes of authors I want to read and often add particular titles onto lists of books I might buy because they are unobtainable in the library. Often I cannot afford to buy the books I want but occasionally I discover books that are so ridiculously inexpensive that it would be a crime not to buy them. This collection of four stories by the Argentine writer Marco Denevi, beautifully translated by Alberto Manguel, is one such book. I paid £3.50, including postage and it copies can still be found at this bargain price. I recommend that advantage be taken while it exists.
Who could resist a collection called 'The Redemption of the Cannibal Woman and other stories'? I couldn't but then I had already read one of the other stories in this collection, Michel, 'In Another Part of the Forest: the Flamingo Anthology of Gay Literature' edited by Alberto Manguel. Of that story Manguel wrote, in 1994:
"...Argentinian society is notoriously homophobic...persecution has been - and continues to be...exceptionally viscous and blackmail of gays is common...The detective story, in which Marco Denevi excels - 'Rose At Ten' and 'Secret Ceremony' are masterpieces of the genre - serves in 'Michel' to map, inexorably, the tragedy of misdirected desire."
It is because of the quality of 'Michel' that I have shelved this collection as of queer-interest although the other stories can not be described as of queer-interest (and are certainly not gay) they have an allusive homoeroticism but that is almost inevitable. Well into the 1930s the toughs of the Buenos Aires underworld danced the tango only amongst themselves, because dancing with a woman was considered unmanly while Esteban Echeverría’s 'Slaughteryard', a classic taught in all Argentinian schools is about a young man threatened with sodomy by corncob (I'd love to bring that novel before a Texas or Florida school board for approval).
Buenos Aires as a city has a mythology as rich and multilayered as the New York of Damon Runyon or the Paris of Maupassant, Balzac and Zola. It is from Buenos Aires fractured and complex psyche that Devni draws his characters and sets his stories. Buenos Aires lives in these stories as a character in its own right. When he delves into the recesses of its most despised citizens, as he does in 'The Redemption of the Cannibal Woman', he gives them an unsentimental dignity that reminds me of Alberto Moravia at his best.
The four stories in this volume are a joy to read and a reminder of both a time and tradition which now, to an old man like me, seems richer and more honest than what is honoured now. I am probably wrong about the failures of today's literature but I will stand by my praise of older works like this.
Who could resist a collection called 'The Redemption of the Cannibal Woman and other stories'? I couldn't but then I had already read one of the other stories in this collection, Michel, 'In Another Part of the Forest: the Flamingo Anthology of Gay Literature' edited by Alberto Manguel. Of that story Manguel wrote, in 1994:
"...Argentinian society is notoriously homophobic...persecution has been - and continues to be...exceptionally viscous and blackmail of gays is common...The detective story, in which Marco Denevi excels - 'Rose At Ten' and 'Secret Ceremony' are masterpieces of the genre - serves in 'Michel' to map, inexorably, the tragedy of misdirected desire."
It is because of the quality of 'Michel' that I have shelved this collection as of queer-interest although the other stories can not be described as of queer-interest (and are certainly not gay) they have an allusive homoeroticism but that is almost inevitable. Well into the 1930s the toughs of the Buenos Aires underworld danced the tango only amongst themselves, because dancing with a woman was considered unmanly while Esteban Echeverría’s 'Slaughteryard', a classic taught in all Argentinian schools is about a young man threatened with sodomy by corncob (I'd love to bring that novel before a Texas or Florida school board for approval).
Buenos Aires as a city has a mythology as rich and multilayered as the New York of Damon Runyon or the Paris of Maupassant, Balzac and Zola. It is from Buenos Aires fractured and complex psyche that Devni draws his characters and sets his stories. Buenos Aires lives in these stories as a character in its own right. When he delves into the recesses of its most despised citizens, as he does in 'The Redemption of the Cannibal Woman', he gives them an unsentimental dignity that reminds me of Alberto Moravia at his best.
The four stories in this volume are a joy to read and a reminder of both a time and tradition which now, to an old man like me, seems richer and more honest than what is honoured now. I am probably wrong about the failures of today's literature but I will stand by my praise of older works like this.
October 7, 2022
En realida leí Reunión de desaparecidos pero no lo encontré acá en goodreads y como empieza con este cuento podría creer que la selección es la misma pero lo desconozco. Sólo puedo decir que me pareció brillante, un cuento mejor que el otro y muy distintos uno de otros. Cómo no había leído antes a Denevi, no lo sé
August 2, 2022
Una carrellata di vite minuscole (come le avrebbe definite Pierre Michon), ingenue, commoventi, grottesche, sullo sfondo di una Buenos Aires che non esiste più. Raffinatissima la traduzione, in cui si sente il tocco di Angelo Morino.
October 22, 2012
Four sad, gentle, lonely stories.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews