Flowers & Mishima's Illustrated Biography

A short novel of brief chapters, each named after a flower and meant, after an ancient Sumerian method, to be read on its own like the contemplation of a single bloom; yet the stories cross and turn around one centre, in no named city or time. Most of the characters carry a disaster that began before their birth. A doctor is tied to thalidomide and the malformed children it left, while his assistant keeps watch over the undressed patients who must be examined before any compensation is paid; a writer with an artificial leg studies people with unusual sexual lives; a poet adopts newborn twins without arms or legs; a man called the Autumnal Lover desires only the old. Around them are a husband who changes sex and wants to go on living with his wife, a father who infects his baby with AIDS, and secret sex clubs.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

117 pages in the original

First published

2001 by Joaquín Mortiz

Author's age

41 when first published

ISBN

9789682708268 (original)

9780983139232 (7Vientos, United States)

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