Devoured by the Moon - Tapa dura

"All lovers of literary fantasy have a mental Mount Rushmore that surely includes Borges and Calvino, perhaps one or two others. Having read these marvellous poems, I'm glad I saved room on my own imaginary rock face for Rafael Perez Estrada. Like the best surrealists, he makes extraordinary montages out of ordinary materials: mirrors, shadows, water, murder, fog, angels, dreams. (Did I fool you, reader, with 'angels'? If so, I didn't mean to, for angels are as common in the world of Perez Estrada as anything else.) In a typical poem, a mysterious beauty rushes up to the poet, opens a zipper on her breast, and hands him her heart 'so if someone stabs me, ' she says, 'I won't completely die.' These poems are as durable as granite; they won't die, either, as long as readers adore writing as pleasurable and inventive as this."

Before his death in 2000, Rafael Perez Estrada was one of contemporary Spain's most imaginative and unique writers. A several-time finalist for Spain's Premio Nacional de Literatura, he published over forty books in his lifetime. He created a body of work that often defies classification, crafting fantastic realities from myth, fable, and his own Mediterranean surroundings. Perez Estrada's writing has been compared to that of Borges and Calvino for the way it incorporates the fantastic to alter our perception of reality. These translations by Steven J. Stewart present his work in all its richness.