Borges meets Chandler via Márquez in this poetry novel in translation from one of Mexico’s best known and beloved authors, winner of the Xavier Villaurutia Prize. Translated by Bolaño’s translator, Dylan Thomas Prize shortlisted poet David Shook.
Tedi López Mills expands family drama into critical conceptual questions as she drives home what Rimbaud meant when he wrote “Domesticity leads too far.” —Forrest Gander
After being let go from his job due to his unstable behaviour, Mr Gordon experiences the unfolding of his spirit in an artificial Californian Eden. In the shade of a thousand-leaved tree, very near a pool’s edge, Gordon transcribes his thoughts, memories and questions while he tries to cope with abuse from his wife and his best friend, and battle dialogues emanating from an interior voice reminding us of Berryman’s Mr Bones. Death on Rua Augusta is the diary of a person who cannibalises themselves. In this important narrative poem, Tedi Lopez Mills dives magisterially into the machine of the mind to locate the fine line that keeps us tied to the world. A chapter-based novel in poetry form, Tedi Lopez Mills has written Death on Rua Augusta in the magic-realist tradition, drawing on film noir and West Coast thrillers – making this a cinematically surreal and strange delight for all readers.
