The Ship of Fools has established Cristina Peri Rossi, author of a dozen other books of poetry and prose, as a leading writer in Europe and Latin America. This is her most important work in English and is recognized as a modern classic.
The Ship of Fools subverts and reinvents the novel form, its characters, genders, and language, mixing fantasy and reality, medieval and modern. The wandering hero refuses to conform to an established order that can descend to the depths of militarism and machismo. The relationship between power and sex is posed in a series of ever more ambiguous events, dreams and riddles. All is resolved in the stunning climax that wittily overturns the traditional novel’s progress of man and woman towards the marriage bed.
“A glorious mess, baffling and alluring . . . [an] exercise of mind and emotion that can make sense of the universe without reducing its complexity. That’s hard to do, and that’s what she’s done.” —The Village Voice
“A journey around the world as kaleidoscope, ever changing, inquisitive.” —El Pais (Madrid)
“Biting satire . . . worthy of Gulliver’s Travels.” —Women’s Review of Books