Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel by Julián Ríos

[Diane]

Rating: 3.5 stars


Babble would be more apropriate in the title than Babel. This is supposedly a retelling of the Don Juan story with London as a backdrop instead of the usual Spain. What there is of the story is difficult to follow, however, due to the heavy-handed word play.

I have read a lot of 1001 books with extensive word play, but this one really takes the cake. While the puns were creative and often fun, 595 pages of this get old after a while. My biggest question is how in the world did this book get translated? Many of the puns are language-specific and wouln't lend themselves to translation with the same impact. So, out of curiosity, I looked this up. It turns out that Rios worked closely with the two English language translators and that it took six years to accomplish the task. I imagine he had to re-write significant portions of the text to make this work. I am curious to see how the Spanish version reads vs. the English, but.... maybe not enough to re-read the book.