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The Novices of Lerna
A forgotten masterpiece by an enigmatic master of Argentine literature
When unambitious scholar Ramón Beltra receives a mysterious invitation to a lucrative six-month fellowship at the University of Lerna in Switzerland, he reluctantly complies with the unusual qualifying paperwork requiring several pages of detailed measurements and photographs of his entire body. Beltra soon finds himself in the deserted university town of Lerna, together with twenty-three other ‘novices’ subject to the same undisclosed project – all of them doppelgangers of Beltra himself. At first, Beltra is the only one to bristle at the school’s dizzying array of rules and regulations, but this all changes with the onset of an uncontrollable epidemic, and the fellows begin dying off one by one...
The Novices of Lerna is a meditation on identity, surveillance, and isolation that remains eerily relevant. Shot through with wry humour and tender absurdity, this novella offers a perfect introduction to Ángel Bonomini’s incomparable body of work.
A contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges, ÁNGEL BONOMINI has long been one of the great untranslated writers of Argentine fiction. His masterpiece, The Novices of Lerna, was originally published in 1972, but Bonomini’s meditations on identity, surveillance, and isolation remain eerily prescient. In his lifetime, Bonomini was the two-time recipient of the prestigious Premio Konex.
When unambitious scholar Ramón Beltra receives a mysterious invitation to a lucrative six-month fellowship at the University of Lerna in Switzerland, he reluctantly complies with the unusual qualifying paperwork requiring several pages of detailed measurements and photographs of his entire body. Beltra soon finds himself in the deserted university town of Lerna, together with twenty-three other ‘novices’ subject to the same undisclosed project – all of them doppelgangers of Beltra himself. At first, Beltra is the only one to bristle at the school’s dizzying array of rules and regulations, but this all changes with the onset of an uncontrollable epidemic, and the fellows begin dying off one by one...
The Novices of Lerna is a meditation on identity, surveillance, and isolation that remains eerily relevant. Shot through with wry humour and tender absurdity, this novella offers a perfect introduction to Ángel Bonomini’s incomparable body of work.
A contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges, ÁNGEL BONOMINI has long been one of the great untranslated writers of Argentine fiction. His masterpiece, The Novices of Lerna, was originally published in 1972, but Bonomini’s meditations on identity, surveillance, and isolation remain eerily prescient. In his lifetime, Bonomini was the two-time recipient of the prestigious Premio Konex.
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 84 reviews
January 6, 2025
An interesting story on how lack of individuality and surveillance assert their influence. Alienation, social control and uncanny likeness all impart themselves on our main character, an unambitious lawyer from Argentina.
I didn’t want to get lost like a rat in this maze, which was complex despite it seeming simplicity.
Ramon Barta, a doctor in law from Argentina finds himself whisked away to a mysterious Swiss university. Soon in The Novices of Lerna it becomes apparent why his measures were needed in the greatest detail, and that what seemed to be good to be true is actually maybe just that. Ángel Bonomini, a contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges, uses simple language and visual queues, like pale blue jumpsuits, to give us an unsettling narrative. The plague (I despised this death because I was being denied a battle) that ensues is reminiscent of The Plague by Albert Camus, if not dived into too much details.
I felt this was a claustrophobic and effectively written read, and the initial commentary of the main character, that it is better to keep one's head down and not seek promotion and communion with fellow humans, seems to be the key to the book: I learned to be alone. I learned that the good thing about solitude is that it reinforces our certainty of being alive.
I didn’t want to get lost like a rat in this maze, which was complex despite it seeming simplicity.
Ramon Barta, a doctor in law from Argentina finds himself whisked away to a mysterious Swiss university. Soon in The Novices of Lerna it becomes apparent why his measures were needed in the greatest detail, and that what seemed to be good to be true is actually maybe just that. Ángel Bonomini, a contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges, uses simple language and visual queues, like pale blue jumpsuits, to give us an unsettling narrative. The plague (I despised this death because I was being denied a battle) that ensues is reminiscent of The Plague by Albert Camus, if not dived into too much details.
I felt this was a claustrophobic and effectively written read, and the initial commentary of the main character, that it is better to keep one's head down and not seek promotion and communion with fellow humans, seems to be the key to the book: I learned to be alone. I learned that the good thing about solitude is that it reinforces our certainty of being alive.
June 1, 2024
The opening novella of this collection - the titular Novices of Lerna - is a fantastically absurd yet wholly engaging read.
Beltran is a young 'porteño' graduate who, to his surprise because his grades are average at best, is invited for a half year scholarship at a renowned Swiss university. When he arrives however, it appears there are 23 identical other students already there, all his exact physical copies, sourced by the university from all over the globe. What can be the reason for this programme? And what does it say about Beltran?
Themes of individuality, mirrors, uniqueness and doubleness appear to fascinate this author and recur in the remaining short stories.
The opening novella is more accessible than the others and for that reason appealed more to me.
The other short stories are humorous, absurd, thought-provoking and written in the clearest style, yet too often the meaning eluded me...
Beltran is a young 'porteño' graduate who, to his surprise because his grades are average at best, is invited for a half year scholarship at a renowned Swiss university. When he arrives however, it appears there are 23 identical other students already there, all his exact physical copies, sourced by the university from all over the globe. What can be the reason for this programme? And what does it say about Beltran?
Themes of individuality, mirrors, uniqueness and doubleness appear to fascinate this author and recur in the remaining short stories.
The opening novella is more accessible than the others and for that reason appealed more to me.
The other short stories are humorous, absurd, thought-provoking and written in the clearest style, yet too often the meaning eluded me...
October 1, 2024
Normally when I grade a collection of short stories I average out the scores of the individual stories, but in this case, I have no hesitation in giving five stars due to the strength of three of the stories, particularly the title story.
Note that the title story, a long short story, or short novella, is available from Peninsula Press by itself.
Bonomini, a contemporary of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, and Jorge Luis Borges, had never been translated into English before this collection.
The Novices of Lerna concerns an academic, a lawyer, offered a prestigious place at a foreign university to study. On his application papers he must give detailed measurements of every aspect of his body, as his fellow scholars are all look exactly the same as him. On arrival the scholars are given a set of rules intended to eradicate their identities further. After some months a contagious illness spreads amongst them, perhaps an ironic coincidence, or maybe part of a wider plan.
The rest of the stories are very short, and a real mix of genre and indeed quality, some seem experimental. In common to them all is that ambiguity that was encountered when considering the illness that spread amongst the scholars - in, did this actually happen.
I would highlight two others, The Fire in which the narrator is watching his workplace burn down, and The Hunt in which an 11 year old boy is deemed to be just a year too young to join the men of his family on their winter stag hunt.
A feature of Bonomini’s writing is humour, evident throughout though sparsely positioned, and often dark. An example is in the story The Model in which the protagonist goes shopping for underpants.
Note that the title story, a long short story, or short novella, is available from Peninsula Press by itself.
Bonomini, a contemporary of Adolfo Bioy Casares, Silvina Ocampo, and Jorge Luis Borges, had never been translated into English before this collection.
The Novices of Lerna concerns an academic, a lawyer, offered a prestigious place at a foreign university to study. On his application papers he must give detailed measurements of every aspect of his body, as his fellow scholars are all look exactly the same as him. On arrival the scholars are given a set of rules intended to eradicate their identities further. After some months a contagious illness spreads amongst them, perhaps an ironic coincidence, or maybe part of a wider plan.
The rest of the stories are very short, and a real mix of genre and indeed quality, some seem experimental. In common to them all is that ambiguity that was encountered when considering the illness that spread amongst the scholars - in, did this actually happen.
I would highlight two others, The Fire in which the narrator is watching his workplace burn down, and The Hunt in which an 11 year old boy is deemed to be just a year too young to join the men of his family on their winter stag hunt.
A feature of Bonomini’s writing is humour, evident throughout though sparsely positioned, and often dark. An example is in the story The Model in which the protagonist goes shopping for underpants.
Want to read
April 16, 2025my libby loan is expiring before i can get to this, so this is a message for future me: do better <3
May 2, 2025
'I felt a frank repulsion for any rule I didn't impose on myself.'
An enjoyably strange and absurdist tale that lives somewhere between Kafka, Murakami, and Saramago, concerning identity, control and surveillance. Very good.
An enjoyably strange and absurdist tale that lives somewhere between Kafka, Murakami, and Saramago, concerning identity, control and surveillance. Very good.
October 27, 2024
Dr Beltra, a recent PhD graduate with a minor publication in an alumni magazine, receives a curious invitation to a six-month fellowship at a research institute in Lerna, Switzerland. The circumstances seem suspicious: the language of the letter is excessively fawning, the institute itself is unheard of, and his own nascent academic career is mediocre. How did this Argentinian scholar become known to this obscure Swiss academy? Putting these doubts aside, he accepts and, soon afterwards, he is sent a form requesting biometric information about himself—measurements and photos of his entire body. The forms seem absurd but he complies. When he eventually arrives, traveling all the way from Argentine, he is greeted by a man who resembles him exactly: in appearance, voice, and gesture. As he learns, the institute is host to twenty-three exact doppelgängers of himself and they are all, in some undisclosed way, part of an experimental study. At the institute, they each take their own personally chosen course of study, in whatever field they enjoy; they are not allowed to share their individual names; they cannot visit each other's apartments; they can smoke but they can never offer tobacco. It is an educational regime that erases their individual differences and yet also separates and isolates them.
It is a story that recalls Borges and Kafka more than Dostoevsky or Saramago (both of whose novels titled The Double involve hostile conflicts between doppelgängers). In this story, each of the students (or "novices", as they are called) strives to achieve some kind of individuality. Initially, Dr Beltra feels an uncanny sense of "depersonalization". He sees and listens to men, identical to himself, saying exactly what he would have said, and his own sense of self is fractured when mirrored in these identical bodies, in their gestures, words and mannerisms. Yet he also notices, over time, how they all try to maintain their own individual style, searching for some foreign style that will mark them out. The institute discourages them from sharing personal names or forming any friendships, and yet they each try to adopt unique mannerisms to distinguish themselves from each other. Over the course of the story, however, the novices slowly disappear, as the remaining have to be quarantined for safety. What differentiates them, as we learn, is not the details of their lives but the time and order of their deaths.
This is a collection of stories preoccupied with identity, sameness, and individuality. In "The CCC", the regulars at a café are troubled to learn that every other CCC is the same, that the same people always frequent a CCC, that every CCC location is a reproduction of another—and so they conjecture that any act they take at their CCC will also be replicated at every other CCC (what "CCC" stands for is never explicitly explained); they hatch a conspiracy to destroy all CCCs by setting fire to their own. Similarly, in "The Last One," two strangers, an old man and a young man, meet at an embankment and set up camp; the old man watches over the young man during the course of the night; he himself had just spent the day burying an older dead man whom he found by an embankment; he worries that the same situation will recur that night and the young man will be left to bury him in the morning just as he had done the previous day. In both stories, identity is iterative; each moment seems to recapitulate an earlier moment; every person discovers that they are an "eternal return" of an earlier person.
Bonomini's stories problematize the idea of a whole, integrated and bounded self. In "Theories", a boy with imaginative ideas about the world starts to worry that every thought he has is actually derived from his sister, who tends to cynically dismiss his theories. In "The Index Card", a failed poet fakes his own death and reinvents himself as a scholar, devoting himself to the exegesis of the poetry of his former poetic self, and he is enraged to find that people admire his volumes of commentary more than the poems themselves—his literary essays seem more like manifestos of art than simple explications of the poems. In both stories, selfhood is split: in one, a boy comes to believe his own thoughts do not belong to him; in the other, a man assumes a new identity and there is a schizoid division of the lackluster poet and revolutionary critic. The self is porous and fragmented.
We live in an age that valorizes the "authentic self", that insists every individual is different, and that wants to reject the Aristotelian axiom that "a is equal to a"—no person is a mere replica of another. Bonomini's stories are a surreal rejoinder: people and events repeat in loops; nothing is new; and, in fact, the one who tries to assert uniqueness is a fascist, going against the foundations of classical logic. Bonomini's collection is a refutation of the cult of personhood and individuality.
It is a story that recalls Borges and Kafka more than Dostoevsky or Saramago (both of whose novels titled The Double involve hostile conflicts between doppelgängers). In this story, each of the students (or "novices", as they are called) strives to achieve some kind of individuality. Initially, Dr Beltra feels an uncanny sense of "depersonalization". He sees and listens to men, identical to himself, saying exactly what he would have said, and his own sense of self is fractured when mirrored in these identical bodies, in their gestures, words and mannerisms. Yet he also notices, over time, how they all try to maintain their own individual style, searching for some foreign style that will mark them out. The institute discourages them from sharing personal names or forming any friendships, and yet they each try to adopt unique mannerisms to distinguish themselves from each other. Over the course of the story, however, the novices slowly disappear, as the remaining have to be quarantined for safety. What differentiates them, as we learn, is not the details of their lives but the time and order of their deaths.
This is a collection of stories preoccupied with identity, sameness, and individuality. In "The CCC", the regulars at a café are troubled to learn that every other CCC is the same, that the same people always frequent a CCC, that every CCC location is a reproduction of another—and so they conjecture that any act they take at their CCC will also be replicated at every other CCC (what "CCC" stands for is never explicitly explained); they hatch a conspiracy to destroy all CCCs by setting fire to their own. Similarly, in "The Last One," two strangers, an old man and a young man, meet at an embankment and set up camp; the old man watches over the young man during the course of the night; he himself had just spent the day burying an older dead man whom he found by an embankment; he worries that the same situation will recur that night and the young man will be left to bury him in the morning just as he had done the previous day. In both stories, identity is iterative; each moment seems to recapitulate an earlier moment; every person discovers that they are an "eternal return" of an earlier person.
Bonomini's stories problematize the idea of a whole, integrated and bounded self. In "Theories", a boy with imaginative ideas about the world starts to worry that every thought he has is actually derived from his sister, who tends to cynically dismiss his theories. In "The Index Card", a failed poet fakes his own death and reinvents himself as a scholar, devoting himself to the exegesis of the poetry of his former poetic self, and he is enraged to find that people admire his volumes of commentary more than the poems themselves—his literary essays seem more like manifestos of art than simple explications of the poems. In both stories, selfhood is split: in one, a boy comes to believe his own thoughts do not belong to him; in the other, a man assumes a new identity and there is a schizoid division of the lackluster poet and revolutionary critic. The self is porous and fragmented.
The dramatic rise of identity, which has caused so much damage in the world of finance, will be supplanted by the idea of infuturation which the Minister of Revolutionary Logic will soon discuss. Who can think today that a is equal to a? Who can defend the clumsy idea that the first a in "Ana" is equal to the second a in "Ana"?So declares the new president installed by a military junta in "The Report". The story is a satirical speech by a revolutionary, who promises a new future filled with philosophers, scientists and artists, a future in which no individual is the same as another. Linguists and philologists will revise the language ("Perhaps "arrivals" will come to mean "departures". Perhaps the year will end in January and start in December" he says). It is a comic parody of a despot enforcing doublethink ("Power opens two paths: imposition or persuasion. That is why I insist that the officer class allow itself to be persuaded"—perversely making persuasion an order) but at the core of the joke is a lie: that the future will lift the individual out of a recurring history of oppression.
We live in an age that valorizes the "authentic self", that insists every individual is different, and that wants to reject the Aristotelian axiom that "a is equal to a"—no person is a mere replica of another. Bonomini's stories are a surreal rejoinder: people and events repeat in loops; nothing is new; and, in fact, the one who tries to assert uniqueness is a fascist, going against the foundations of classical logic. Bonomini's collection is a refutation of the cult of personhood and individuality.
May 19, 2024
Not since Borges have I so thoroughly enjoyed every single selection in a short story collection
December 21, 2024
The title story was really good.
July 30, 2025
This one was absolutely brilliant, funny and bizarre
The associations I had reading it went in all sorts of directions… the current mass production of faces as seen in Hollywood, How the removal / lack of importance of external markers of identity allow a certain freedom (and identity as a theme itself, what essentially is important for humans, the unfairness of war …..
I immediatly want to read it again
The associations I had reading it went in all sorts of directions… the current mass production of faces as seen in Hollywood, How the removal / lack of importance of external markers of identity allow a certain freedom (and identity as a theme itself, what essentially is important for humans, the unfairness of war …..
I immediatly want to read it again
Read
December 29, 2024Read the titular novella and really liked it. Need to return to it and read the short stories at a later time.
October 30, 2025
I was so disappointed to find out these were stories only to stumble upon some of the best short stories I’ve read in ages. There were a handful that I feel didn’t ever fully connect to the authors intention, but the good stories were so good they drowned all those loose ends out.
Huge highlights were The Martyr (my favorite), The CCC, The Bengal Tiger, and The Hunt. The Novices of Lerna, the story the book is named for, left much less of an impression than the stories that followed it. I was super intrigued by By The Word, but that was one that I felt never fully landed.
Really incredible stuff here. Very interesting writing full of life and a real desire to create something interesting and simultaneously emotional. Extremely refreshing.
Huge highlights were The Martyr (my favorite), The CCC, The Bengal Tiger, and The Hunt. The Novices of Lerna, the story the book is named for, left much less of an impression than the stories that followed it. I was super intrigued by By The Word, but that was one that I felt never fully landed.
Really incredible stuff here. Very interesting writing full of life and a real desire to create something interesting and simultaneously emotional. Extremely refreshing.
April 6, 2024
What a wonderful collection with both Introduction and Completionist vibes in that it’s equally impressive still life and unorganized basket of fruit. Each story has a unique mood, setting and point to make, right up until the penultimate paragraph where waiting for you isn’t a twist ending so much as a “wait, so what did you think I was talking about?” moment.
November 27, 2024
A fantastic short story with questions about identity and community. Who’s the outsider? What is belonging? Does compliance threaten the sense of self?
September 28, 2025
I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about what it was about or what to expect and WOW. These are the kind of stories you wish you were shown when you were learning about literature. It feels so approachable and there are also these deep themes about love and individualism and trauma and a half a dozen other human experiences.
The fact that this is Ángel's first book translated into English is a absolute crime. These stories are funny and engaging and just really a joy to listen to. Some of these short stories could be full novellas if he had wanted them to be.
only 4 stars because some of the stories were just okay. but this hit rate was really good
The fact that this is Ángel's first book translated into English is a absolute crime. These stories are funny and engaging and just really a joy to listen to. Some of these short stories could be full novellas if he had wanted them to be.
only 4 stars because some of the stories were just okay. but this hit rate was really good
January 23, 2025
I enjoyed the beginning as well as where Ángel took the short stories afterwards however I wish at some point the book came back to the original concept (in writing). The beginning could be expanded into a novel of its own which would be interesting to read.
April 27, 2025
I found most of the stories to just be ok, but there were some really great ones that I think will stick with me, namely: The Novices of Lerna, The Fire, and The CCC.
July 7, 2025
not very interesting, translated from spanish and some is clearly lost in translation. should’ve been longer
January 4, 2025
Estuvo bien, me hizo pensar cosas
November 8, 2024
no klasycznie jak to z opowiadaniami niektóre mnie zachwyciły a niektóre missed me completely
November 6, 2024
*Some spoilers follow*
In the surreal and unsettling first story in this collection, the title novella, a man is invited to join an academic department in Lerna, Switzerland, on a fellowship where he finds that everyone there looks identical to him. If that weren’t unsettling enough, they all start dying, one after the other.
In the short story *The Fire*, an arsonist watches from a distance while the church he’s just set on fire burns down, and ponders. *The Bengal Tiger* is a story that ties itself up in knots. Central to the story is the narrator’s realisation that earth’s surface is a mirror:
Ergo, everything that happens happens simultaneously in reality and on another plane: the surface of the planet. The surface is the consciousness of the species.
But the narrator then immediately contradicts himself, as if the mirror and indeed reality are as unreliable as the narrator.
*The Model* continues Bonomini’s campaign to unsettle the reader with unreliability: a man hooks up with a woman who apparently died ten years ago. A ghost, or is time not real or linear? In a note after the story, the author tells us that it’s based on a true love story, and then admits that he lied about most of the prior facts—except that she’s very beautiful.
*The CCC* is about how two cousins who go to a chain coffee shop discover that they’re being replicated every day in the chain’s different locations, but only there. It troubles them so much that they come up with an extreme solution to the problem of their multiplicity. *The Singer* is a run-on sentence about the death of a singer, and the strangeness of our connection to celebrity: our deep identification with famous people, the simultaneous realness and made-up-ness of them. *Theories* repeats the heme of mirrors and unreality: what if reality is just something we’ve dreamed up together?
Mirrors appear again in *The Report*, in which a junta amusingly declares that Aristotelian logic is false, and treasonous, and that time is in fact moving backwards. Anyone who’s been faced with propaganda—and we all have, at this late stage of human history—will find all of this familiar; Bonomini’s protagonist cleverly subverts reality by suggesting that mirrors are unreliable, while arguing at the same time that they tell the truth. Propaganda doesn’t ever really care what the truth is, and contradicts itself at every turn. And in *By the Word*, a man literally dies by them—words, that is. An allegory for a writer?
In all of these stories, Bonomini is playing with apparent fixity—time, reality, identity—as many other South American writers do. It’s fabulism, yes, magical realism even, in search of hidden truths. Whether Bonomini himself found these truths as he wrote, I don’t know; but certainly his collection challenges the reader, playfully, to re-examine everything they think they know. Others perhaps do it better; but this is a collection worth reading.
Thanks to Transit Books and Edelweiss for DRC access.
In the surreal and unsettling first story in this collection, the title novella, a man is invited to join an academic department in Lerna, Switzerland, on a fellowship where he finds that everyone there looks identical to him. If that weren’t unsettling enough, they all start dying, one after the other.
In the short story *The Fire*, an arsonist watches from a distance while the church he’s just set on fire burns down, and ponders. *The Bengal Tiger* is a story that ties itself up in knots. Central to the story is the narrator’s realisation that earth’s surface is a mirror:
Ergo, everything that happens happens simultaneously in reality and on another plane: the surface of the planet. The surface is the consciousness of the species.
But the narrator then immediately contradicts himself, as if the mirror and indeed reality are as unreliable as the narrator.
*The Model* continues Bonomini’s campaign to unsettle the reader with unreliability: a man hooks up with a woman who apparently died ten years ago. A ghost, or is time not real or linear? In a note after the story, the author tells us that it’s based on a true love story, and then admits that he lied about most of the prior facts—except that she’s very beautiful.
*The CCC* is about how two cousins who go to a chain coffee shop discover that they’re being replicated every day in the chain’s different locations, but only there. It troubles them so much that they come up with an extreme solution to the problem of their multiplicity. *The Singer* is a run-on sentence about the death of a singer, and the strangeness of our connection to celebrity: our deep identification with famous people, the simultaneous realness and made-up-ness of them. *Theories* repeats the heme of mirrors and unreality: what if reality is just something we’ve dreamed up together?
Mirrors appear again in *The Report*, in which a junta amusingly declares that Aristotelian logic is false, and treasonous, and that time is in fact moving backwards. Anyone who’s been faced with propaganda—and we all have, at this late stage of human history—will find all of this familiar; Bonomini’s protagonist cleverly subverts reality by suggesting that mirrors are unreliable, while arguing at the same time that they tell the truth. Propaganda doesn’t ever really care what the truth is, and contradicts itself at every turn. And in *By the Word*, a man literally dies by them—words, that is. An allegory for a writer?
In all of these stories, Bonomini is playing with apparent fixity—time, reality, identity—as many other South American writers do. It’s fabulism, yes, magical realism even, in search of hidden truths. Whether Bonomini himself found these truths as he wrote, I don’t know; but certainly his collection challenges the reader, playfully, to re-examine everything they think they know. Others perhaps do it better; but this is a collection worth reading.
Thanks to Transit Books and Edelweiss for DRC access.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 14, 2025
i really liked the titular story and the next few, but i kinda lost interest as the stories continued. i definitely liked the themes around self and individuality
November 9, 2024
4.5. I have not heard of this author before, I picked up this novella solely because it was in my favourite corner of Daunt books where excellent books are usually featured, and it absolutely delivered! My rating is for “The Novices of Lerna” story only, as the edition I read is not the short story collection of the same name which most people here have rated.
April 16, 2025
This is a novella that I wish were longer so that some of Bonomini’s concepts could be fleshed out a little bit more. I was hungry for more story and left with so many questions. Despite wanting more, I enjoyed this unique exploration into the ideas of identity and individuality. I love weird speculative fiction.
June 17, 2025
I had two main impressions after reading this series of novellas and shorts stories:
1. What.
2. I should have read this in Spanish
I will be honest and admit that I struggle with magical realism, despite the best efforts of my Spanish literature professors. I’ve read plenty of Borges and this book was compared favorably to his work. The writing in this felt like it was beautiful, and it was certainly advanced language, but it probably sings like poetry in Spanish, and I regret not taking the time to find and decipher the original. Besides the beauty of the language, I found the content of the stories frankly bizarre. Bonomini kept returning to the idea of people having a double as something horrifying. That seems like a skill issue to me, Bonomini. Oh, you have encountered someone with your same face and voice and mannerisms and you are instantly filled with rage and want to kill them? This scenario from your nightmares is literally any day of my life as an identical twin, and never once has my double brought me anything but joy lol. I also kept waiting for the stories to connect, but that is on me for assuming that they would. I probably would have enjoyed reading any one of these stories as an assignment in Spanish class, but all of them right after another, in English, without anyone to discuss them with, and without time to do any deep analysis was draining, and so it took me days to get through this slim volume. I’m not sure who I would recommend this to. Fans of Borges? Spanish literature scholars? Fans of translation? It’s definitely niche, and I fell ever so slightly outside of the niche.
1. What.
2. I should have read this in Spanish
I will be honest and admit that I struggle with magical realism, despite the best efforts of my Spanish literature professors. I’ve read plenty of Borges and this book was compared favorably to his work. The writing in this felt like it was beautiful, and it was certainly advanced language, but it probably sings like poetry in Spanish, and I regret not taking the time to find and decipher the original. Besides the beauty of the language, I found the content of the stories frankly bizarre. Bonomini kept returning to the idea of people having a double as something horrifying. That seems like a skill issue to me, Bonomini. Oh, you have encountered someone with your same face and voice and mannerisms and you are instantly filled with rage and want to kill them? This scenario from your nightmares is literally any day of my life as an identical twin, and never once has my double brought me anything but joy lol. I also kept waiting for the stories to connect, but that is on me for assuming that they would. I probably would have enjoyed reading any one of these stories as an assignment in Spanish class, but all of them right after another, in English, without anyone to discuss them with, and without time to do any deep analysis was draining, and so it took me days to get through this slim volume. I’m not sure who I would recommend this to. Fans of Borges? Spanish literature scholars? Fans of translation? It’s definitely niche, and I fell ever so slightly outside of the niche.
Read
August 18, 2024def quite hit or miss, though in its most successful moments it wields a stylish, estranging language that seems to lead inexorably toward an unsettled metaphysics—i.e., the more surprising the sentences the more slippery the world they construct. the resulting surrealism is unbound by rules and impossible to pin down according to any genre or formula but totally electric & stimulating as a result; the titular novella “the novices of lerna” is of course the best one, though “theories” & “the hunt” are also practically perfect, and “the ccc” is a particularly good instance of well-articulated mystery; “the model” and “the singer” are great too, esp the latter’s commitment to the unpunctuated stream of consciousness of grief. as for the rest the clause to clause surprises of bonomini’s style can sometimes feel atomized and unmotivated which makes it difficult to keep reading, esp when you know each story will be so short it likely won’t have to runway to achieve liftoff
July 28, 2025
I usually like this kind of writing: speculative, controlled, wry, and offbeat. But my problem with this collection is I had difficulty seeing the point of any of the stories. They tend to be bleak and about loss in one way or another. I keep wondering what it is that Boromini wanted the reader to come away with. That being said, the long title story held my attention (but why did it end that way?), as did "The CCC" and "Figs and Jasmines."
The stories seem to cluster around recurring themes: love, identity, dreams and death. But when I finished the book, I did not feel I had gained meaningful insight into any of them. It also puts me off somewhat that all the women are described as strikingly attractive.
Oddly, I somehow enjoyed reading this and think it is worth others doing that. But I was left wanting more and wish I could have discerned what Boromini was trying to achieve here.
The stories seem to cluster around recurring themes: love, identity, dreams and death. But when I finished the book, I did not feel I had gained meaningful insight into any of them. It also puts me off somewhat that all the women are described as strikingly attractive.
Oddly, I somehow enjoyed reading this and think it is worth others doing that. But I was left wanting more and wish I could have discerned what Boromini was trying to achieve here.
December 26, 2025
It’s not often I’ve read a book in one sitting, let alone over one coffee, but with this short story I did just that.
‘Novices of Lerna’ is a lean piece of prose. None of the descriptions are too lavish, nor is the plot overly drawn out. But it’s a fiendish little story which in 40 pages completely got my attention, and the gist of the plot is this:
What would it be like if you were invited to a university for a 6 month stay, but when you got there you found that all of other students were identical dopplegangers but with different back stories and lives?
It then becomes more fiendish. The narrator finds out he can’t say his name, nor ask the name of his other dopplegangers. It becomes impossible to tell each of the 26 doppelgängers apart. And yet, differences start to show!
And it’s in those differences, and in the weird tricky thinking that the dopplegangers go through to work out whether they’re actually alike or not, and whether they’re really unique, that this becomes magic.
Reading this in a rather dull era or corporate professional conformity that all but demands otherwise unique people to become identically personality-less staff and ‘leave their home selves at the office door’, I felt it rang rather true.
‘Novices of Lerna’ is a lean piece of prose. None of the descriptions are too lavish, nor is the plot overly drawn out. But it’s a fiendish little story which in 40 pages completely got my attention, and the gist of the plot is this:
What would it be like if you were invited to a university for a 6 month stay, but when you got there you found that all of other students were identical dopplegangers but with different back stories and lives?
It then becomes more fiendish. The narrator finds out he can’t say his name, nor ask the name of his other dopplegangers. It becomes impossible to tell each of the 26 doppelgängers apart. And yet, differences start to show!
And it’s in those differences, and in the weird tricky thinking that the dopplegangers go through to work out whether they’re actually alike or not, and whether they’re really unique, that this becomes magic.
Reading this in a rather dull era or corporate professional conformity that all but demands otherwise unique people to become identically personality-less staff and ‘leave their home selves at the office door’, I felt it rang rather true.
May 8, 2025
somewhat kafkaesque, reminded me of The Castle a little bit; we know almost nothing and are given no explanation. there was also a strong preference for parenthetical interjections and i‘m still wondering what that was all about. it added an academic feel to the text, but also teased the idea of what wasn‘t ”said“ or what wasn‘t ”thought,“ but as the reader, we know as much much as beltra does. why clue us in like that? why admit things in parentheses? are you hinting at something being contained, something locked up and hidden?
i thought about natalie babbit once saying in an interview she wanted readers to think about all the unanswered questions in her stories. not as plot holes or things intentionally left out, but what is the purpose of only letting the reader know ~40% of what‘s going on? minor spoilers to follow.
i thought about natalie babbit once saying in an interview she wanted readers to think about all the unanswered questions in her stories. not as plot holes or things intentionally left out, but what is the purpose of only letting the reader know ~40% of what‘s going on? minor spoilers to follow.
December 2, 2024
Yes, yes, yes. So back. A short story collection pleading for affirmation that what’s in you is all that is, has been, or could be. That you are the prism and not one face only, incorporating into yourself all the fullness of experience and reality, unaided (or undefiled). At its best when it goes full Borges, but witty and darkly delightful from front to back. Huge shoutout to my local bookstore for having this on display besides “Labyrinths,” since Reddit’s Borges-and-Bolaño-adjacent recommendations made no mention of Bonomini (which I am learning in real time might be because this translation just released this year, but nevertheless). Also acted as a personal reminder that I need to revisit / finish Nabokov’s “Despair.”
Highlights: “The Singer,” “The Martyr,” “The CCC”
Highlights: “The Singer,” “The Martyr,” “The CCC”
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