Rasero - Softcover

Rebolledo, Francisco

4.16

126 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140260536 ISBN 13: 9780140260533

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1996

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Explores the politics, desires, philosophy, and science of eighteenth century Paris through the life and sexually triggered prophecies of Fausto Rasero, a young Spanish nobleman who comes to know every important figure of his time

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Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

From Booklist:

Rasero is a cornucopia of thought, passion, and hope connecting the eighteenth century to the present. Self-reflexive and modern, yet the embodiment of a past spirit and time, the novel brilliantly re-creates one of the most fascinating and volatile centuries in world history. Fausto Rasero, a Spanish nobleman, is intellectually and emotionally precocious as a child. Later he develops into an elegant, charismatic intellectual, philosopher, and occasional chemist, who migrates to Paris to live among the exemplary intellects of the time. In France he befriends the most influential figures of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, Diderot, Mozart, Hume, and Madame Pompadour. Against this backdrop of eighteenth-century contrasts--rationalism and barbarism, impeccable manners and undisguised lusts--Rasero converses passionately about philosophical ideals until dawn and takes on yet another lover as the sun rises. But at the height of his pleasure, Rasero sees visions, which he gradually recognizes as glimpses of a future 100 to 200 years away. These images of war and odd mechanical contraptions perplex and horrify his rationalist mind. Rasero is driven to catalog his visions, and through his ardent desire to understand their connection to the thoughts and events of his time, we witness the progress--and horrors--of our own. This extraordinary first novel, which won the Pegasus Prize for Literature, is an irresistible treatise on the eternal hopes and failures of human history. Deanna Larson

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