Creature of a Day

Border crossing may be literal, figurative, imaginary, symbolic or psychological, or, as in the Mexican novelist Juan Tovar's Creature of a Day, all of these at once. This richly conceived prose fiction (a novel in the freshest sense) enchants and seduces the reader with a beguiling tableau of tales told in a language contemporary yet resonant of Caldern de la Barca, Chaucer and Shakespeare. Creature of a Day is inhabited by actors and priests, murderers and harlots, mendicants, merchants, pilgrims and storytellers. Themes of isolation and migration emerge in the wit and repartee of these characters; at the same time, in a stream of literary hallucination that flows from Lautreamont and Strindberg to Beckett, Cocteau, Calvino, and Borges, Creature of a Day washes across the North American consciousness. This award-winning translation by Leland H. Chambers reflects a vital new Mexican literature.