Rasero (Pegasus Prize For Literature)

Description: Eighteenth-century Europe, where the neoclassical ideals of balance and harmony are in tragic contrast with the squalor and violence of daily life, where the notion of a social contract emerges against a background of public torture and shameless political cynicism, where unprecedented advances in the sciences are besieged by militant superstition and religious bigotrythis is the Enlightenment, and Francisco Rebolledo's astonishing novel chronicles a soul's voyage through its hazards. The soul is that of Fausto Rasero, a young Spaniard hungry for wisdom. And what a peculiar hero Rasero is - bald since birth, sexually and intellectually precocious at his wet nurse's breast, passionate in manhood, tolerant, warmhearted. Strangely enough, Rasero is also orgasmically clairvoyant, given at the moment of carnal release to apocalyptic visions in which he beholds what we recognize as the horrors of our own century: the Holocaust, the atomic bomb, the Vietnam War. Rasero settles in Paris, the hub of European intellectual life. As he tries to reconcile the sanguine promises of the Enlightenment with the chilling prophecies of his visions, he comes to know virtually every important figure of his time. Through him we encounter the Marquise de Pompadour, Voltaire, Hume, Lavoisier, Diderot, Mozart, Rousseau, and such colorful secondary characters as an innkeeper's bawdy daughter, a lust-ridden priest, and a political zealot who dies accused of attempted regicide. From Publishers Weekly Mexican novelist Rebolledo weaves apocalyptic fantasy into his historical novel about a Spanish nobleman who comes into contact with many of the pivotal figures of the enlightenment. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From Library Journal Set mostly in 18th-century France, this well-balanced mix of history and fiction with the rhythmic reappearance of real-life characters teaches a vibrant history lesson. Rebolledo's cornucopia sprawls like several novels in one as the eponymous hero helps Diderot edit the Encyclopedia, surreptitiously inters Voltaire's body, attends a concert by the child prodigy Mozart and later gives him a piano, and unsuccessfully pleas with Robespierre for the life of his chemist friend, Lavoisier. Prognosticator Rasero often seems the victim of these events rather than the catalyst. Only the problematic denouement and the ineffectual execution of the clairvoyance theme tarnish this otherwise enjoyable and dynamic excursion into the Enlightenment and French Revolution. For most collections. [This book won the 1995 Pegasus Prize for Literature, an award established by the Mobil Corporation to introduce U.S. readers to fiction from countries whose literature rarely appears in English.?