The Fake Muse

Winners of the Inaugural Spain-USA Foundation Translation AwardThe Fake Muse, Max Besora's follow-up to the wild—and wildly beloved—The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí, Conquistador and Founder of New Catalonia, creates a kaleidoscope of absurd situations that, for even more absurd reasons, end up exploding in uncontrolled violence. A novel full of humor that begins as a collection of short stories but which, little by little, builds into a choral work, made up of a variety of characters and various literary genres, all of which demonstrate Besora's fantastic imagination and skill as a writer. This culminates in an unforgettable scene in which the protagonist of the book turns the tables on the author and calls into question his motives, why he chooses to create particular subjects for his books and, above all, his responsibility for how he treats them. Translated by the award-winning Mara Faye Lethem, Besora's The Fake Muse is a delightful, playful novel in the vein of John Barth and Robert Coover, with a contemporary lens.