The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Summa Kaotica by Ventura Ametller tr. Douglas Suttle (Fum d'Estampa)

Summa Kaotica is Douglas Suttle's bravura translation of Ventura Ametller's novel, a near 600 oage surrealist re-telling of Catalan history around the time of the Civil War, a bawdy picaresque and sprawling tale.

This is an fantastical and differently named Catalonia, a surreal anti-history - as one small example the 1929 stock market crash here is caused by a sudden shortage in the supply of feathers from flying cows.

I did have a few issues (oddly for me, not the length)

There is a lot of wordplay in the choice of names for places and people and Suttle has deliberately left the Catalan words untranslated. He's done this out of respect for the language - whose preservation, in defiance of its prohibition, is one of the key themes of the novel - but it does mean that an otherwise riotous read is frequently interrupted by footnotes to explain puns.

It's also somewhat questionable in its objectification of the female characters - it may have read better in Spain, 1982 than in UK 40 years later.

I found reading around 100-150 pages interesting but that was my limit. The story line is just far too complex and I did not enjoy some of the elements of it at all. It’s an admirable book though and impressive undertaking by the translator and publisher.

I’m about halfway through and generally liking it. My main qualm at this point is that it seems quite like there’s rather too much sexual exploitation of the young underaged Anamorphus going on - by two separate characters (so far). Amettler is definitely pushing the “bawdy” line.

This is a book that I might judge differently in different contexts. For the RoC, it fits the mission of the prize to a T in the sense that it is a creative and financial risk. The world is a better place because of the work of Douglas Suttle and Fum d'Estampa.

There are larges swathes of this book that completely pass me by. I see that almost entirely due to my limitations as a reader.

I found this one a very enjoyable and stimulating read, but I agree that the way the sexual content is described dates it and some will find it hard to stomach. All of the characters are caricatures. I was expecting it to be hard work but it never felt like a chore to read, though at times I felt I was only absorbing some of what was happening.

That all puts is perfectly