Where is reality to be found: at the surface of things or behind it? Max Willem, a young art student in Montreal at the end of the 1960s, becomes obsessed with outward appearances - with makeup, costume, and masks of all kinds. For him, outward reality, and in particular that of the opposite sex, is composed of many veils of illusion and artifice through which he must see if he is to feel fully alive. At the same time, Max discovers his exceptional talent for art forgery. Moving to New York, he becomes a tool in the hands of a powerful international ring dealing in forged art, and suffers from the loss of his own artistic integrity. Himself seduced as much a seducer, how can Max escape and redeem his artistic soul? In The Art of Deception, Sergio Kokis has written a novel about mystification and illusion. His exuberant narrative provides a caustic insight into the undersides of art and of love.
Where is reality to be found: at the surface of things or behind it?Max Willem, a young art student in Montreal at the end of the 1960s, becomes obsessed with outward appearances - with makeup, costume, and masks of all kinds. For him, outward reality, and in particular that of the opposite sex, is composed of many veils of illusion and artifice through which he must see if he is to feel fully alive. At the same time, Max discovers his exceptional talent for art forgery. Moving to New York, he becomes a tool in the hands of a powerful international ring dealing in forged art, and suffers from the loss of his own artistic integrity. Himself seduced as much a seducer, how can Max escape and redeem his artistic soul?In The Art of Deception, Sergio Kokis has written a novel about mystification and illusion. His exuberant narrative provides a caustic insight into the undersides of art and of love.
In the early twentieth century, at Lazispils, a small town lost in a region of Livonia (Latvia), the Lutheran pastor Waldemar Salis, who wishes to improve the miserable lives of his parishioners, begins to dream of the mythical America. He announces the arrival of a commission with a mandate to recruit immigrants to Brazil. To those who want to try their luck, the commission offers free land to develop and is paying for the trip. Salis convinces some of his flock to follow him to the promised land and, just as Moses had delivered his people from the yoke of Pharaoh, he would lead his own in America, far from the yoke of the Czar, the Russian language and false belief. One morning the little band left the village to take the train to Riga. They then went to Hamburg, where they sailed for the port of Santos. The crossing is the most challenging for travelers who dream of happiness in the village of Nova Europa which they hope to found upon arriving in the region of São Paulo. But the coveted dream will prove a terrible failure. The author, Kokis Sergio, was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1944 and has lived in Montreal for four decades.
In the tradition of such great Latin American magic realists as Jorge Amada, Sergio Kokis recreates the magic world of a child in Brazil. The novel is told from the point of view of a Brazilian painter in exile somewhere in the northern climes - man who longs for the warmth and vibrancy of his childhood. But his childhood and adolescence were not easy. Torn between a deeply religious (and superstitious) mother and his father, a man of science and reason, the young man survives his home life, life at boarding school, and life abroad to become an artist and a person in his own right. Funhouse (Le pavillon des miroirs in French) has won four major literary awards in Quebec: Grand Prix du livre de MontrÈal, Prix de L’AcadÈmie des lettres du QuÈbec, Prix QuÈbec-Paris, and Prix Desjardins.
Max Willem, a young art student in Montreal at the end of the 1960s, becomes obsessed with outward appearances - with make-up, costume, and masks of all kinds. For him, outward reality, and in particular that of the opposite sex, is composed of many veils of illusion and artifice through which he must see if he is to feel fully alive. At the same time, Max discovers his exceptional talent for art forgery. Moving to New York, he becomes a tool in the hands of a powerful international ring dealing in forged art, and suffers from the loss of his own artistic integrity. Himself seduced as much as a seducer, how can Max escape and redeem his artistic soul?
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