{"product_id":"9781564783684","title":"Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel","description":"\u003cp\u003eA striking reassessment of the Don Juan myth. A literary tour de force, this extraordinary novel is told in single-minded pursuit of double meanings, but it is serious play. Larva is a rollicking account of a masquerade party in an abandoned mansion in London. Milalias (disguised as Don Juan) searches for Babelle (as Sleeping Beauty) through a linguistic funhouse of puns and wordplay recalling Joyce's Finnegans Wake. A mock-scholarly commentary reveals the backgrounds of the masked revellers, while Rios' allusive language shows that words too wear masks, hiding an astonishing range of further meanings and implications. Larva revives a Hispanic tradition repressed for centuries by introducing the English tradition of puns, palindromes and acrostics (a word puzzle in which certain letters in each line form a word or words) and establishes Rios as the most accomplished successor (in any language) to Joyce.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dalkey Archive Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47045730304240,"sku":"9781564783684","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781564783684_p0.jpg?v=1763758174","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781564783684","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}