7 /10 1 Votes
Language Spanish Published in English June 1983 Genre Novel Country Argentina | 3.5/5 Goodreads Publication date 1980 Originally published 1980 Preceded by Pubis Angelical Publisher Random House | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardcover & Paperback) Pages 232 pp (paperback edition) ISBN 978-0-8166-3536-8 (paperback edition) Manuel Puig books Blood of requited love, Pubis Angelical, The Buenos Aires affair, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, Cae la noche tropical | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages (Spanish: Maldición eterna a quien lea estas páginas) is a 1980 novel by Argentine novelist Manuel Puig. As in other works by Puig, the story is formally experimental, consisting of mostly unattributed dialogue, digressing into stories within stories. It also bears many of Puig favorite motifs, including sexuality and leftist revolutionary politics.
Plot introduction
The novel is set in Greenwich Village, near Washington Square. Larry, a poor and otherwise-unemployed former college student, accepts a part-time job taking care of 74-year-old Mr. Ramirez. Mr. Ramirez is an Argentine expatriate who has apparently lost his memory, as well as his understanding of basic concepts such as love and sexual arousal. Though the two men are ostensibly strangers, their conversations reveal that they may somehow have intimate knowledge of each other's pasts. Abruptly and without clear explanation, dialogue often digresses into elaborate melodramatic reenactments of events that may or may not have happened to the two men. There is a 1982 English translation of the novel as "Eternal Curse on the Reader of These Pages".