Asphodels – Bernardo Couto Castillo
Asphodels by Bernardo Couto Castillo / ISBN 9781645250500 / “Presented here for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Jessica Sequeira, it will be sure to gratify lovers of Decadent fiction, horror and modernismo.” A December 2020 title from Snuggly Books.
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In Greek mythology, the asphodel is a flower associated with death; the souls of ordinary mortals are sent to the Asphodel Meadows, vast fields of the underworld. In the twelve stories of Asphodels, Mexican author Bernardo Couto Castillo (1879-1901), a cult figure in Mexico due to his short life and French-influenced Decadent writings, explores death in its many varieties, from Lady Death wandering the streets of the city in merciless search of her next victim, to a hypochondriac who goes mad out of fear of death, to an ultra-refined killer turning to murder due to the beauty of its “symphony in White and Red”, to the extraordinary final metaphysical account of the torture of a soul. Although asphodels do not make a single appearance in this collection, they are like death itself: invisible, everywhere.
Asphodels, originally published in 1897, was the only book to appear in the author’s lifetime.
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