A screenshot of the book cover. Title: The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso
#TheObsceneBirdofNight by #JoséDonoso
I had a nightmare after putting it down last night. This stuff was SO WILD. I was both fascinated and nauseated. Never had a nightmare that woke me up at night like this one 😂
#books 📚📖
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoseDonoso
A character like another, a house like another? Or are they the same, just at different times? Don the papier-mâché head to make "yum-yum", only to be made an imbucha and thrown into the fire.
All praise to the #LatinAmericanBoom
My favorite reads of 2025. First book.
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
“Old women like Peta Ponce have the power to fold time over and confuse it, they multiply and divide it, events are refracted in their gnarled hands as in the most brilliant prism....”
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
A character like another, a house like another? Or are they the same, just at different times? Don the papier-mâché head to make “yum-yum”, only to be made an imbucha and thrown into the fire.
All praise to the #LatinAmericanBoom
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
I don't understand... how you can go on believing in such a stingy God who created so few masks, there are so many of us who go around collecting... whatever castoff enables us to disguise ourselves and feel we're somebody, be somebody....
Finished #TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
Donoso achieved an artwork that goes beyond traditional and even experimental forms of literature. It's a laying bare through masks and disguise…hinted at through images seen sideways…an…eloquent affirmation of existence.
-Megan McDowell, translator
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
"Everything necessary disappears. Only the useless things remain....things sometimes disappear…because men need them and use them and they use them so much that they wear them out until they disappear...."
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
Old women like Peta Ponce have the power to fold time over and confuse it, they multiply and divide it, events are refracted in their gnarled hands as in the most brilliant prism….
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
They don't even have masks...I don't understand…how you can go on believing in such a stingy God who created so few masks, there are so many of us who go around collecting…whatever castoff enables us to disguise ourselves and feel we're somebody, be somebody....
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
“Some shadow or other- mine, Boy's, the Blessed Inés's- always keeps them company. On their wedding night, it was Don Clemente and Peta Ponce, fighting to see which would prevail, who urged them on, like puppet masters with their papier-mâché dolls.”
#TheObsceneBirdofNight
#JoséDonoso
…I gave up my vault in the mausoleum for her to start rotting in my place, keeping it warm for me with her remains…heating it with her body like in the days when she used to turn down the covers and slip a good hot water bottle under them for me to go to bed….
"Nothing in me hesitates. Neither my burning hands, nor my eager sex organ as she caresses my papier-mâché cheek"
#TheObsceneBirdOfNight
