Cover of Locos: A Comedy of Gestures

Locos: A Comedy of Gestures

The interconnected stones that form Felipe Alfau's novel LOCOS take place in a Madrid as exotic as the Baghdad of the 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS and feature unforgettable characters in revolt against their young 'author' "For them," he complains, "reality is what fiction is to real people; they simply love it and make for it against ray almost heroic opposition" Alfau's "comedy of gestures" — a mercurial dreamscape of the eccentric, sometimes criminal, habitues of Toledo's Cafe of the Crazy — was written in English and first published in 1936, favorably reviewed for The Nation by Mary McCarthy, as she recounts here in her Afterword, then long neglected.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 206 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Locos: A Comedy of Gestures? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Locos: A Comedy of Gestures. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. The No World Concerto Shares dalkey archive, fiction, Spain
  2. Christ Versus Arizona Shares dalkey archive, dalkey, Spain
  3. In Partial Disgrace Shares dalkey archive, dalkey, fiction
  4. Amalgamemnon Shares dalkey archive, fiction, dalkey

“People who read Locos: A Comedy of Gestures tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Palinuro de México
  2. Aberration of Starlight
  3. The Jade Cabinet
  4. Omega Minor

“If you want more of the same (literary fiction), start with these.”

  1. Los niños tontos
  2. When I Was Mortal
  3. Exemplary Stories
  4. The Tenant And The Motive

“If it was the dalkey archive that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Quarantine
  2. Springer’s Progress
  3. The Sky Changes
  4. Writers

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry
  2. Lucifer's Son
  3. Vein of Iron
  4. Love, Magic, Adrenaline!