City of Rats

by Copi, Kit Schluter (Translator), César Aira (Introduction)

The Holy Mountain meets Ratatouille in this X-rated fable by Argentine provocateur Copi.

When pet rat Gouri finds himself locked out of his owner’s apartment, he has no choice but to strike out alone onto the pavements of Paris.

But what begins as a strange and marvellous bedtime story — Gouri and his new friend Raka selling flour-coated worms to pigeons for spare change — soon spirals into an exhilarating whirlwind of murder, sex, unionised hamsters, courtroom drama, and, finally, Armageddon.

Told through a series of letters from Gouri to Argentinian playwright Copi, City of Rats channels Copi’s lifelong fascination with society’s outcasts—queer people, immigrants, the homeless, and criminals—into a fiercely imaginative, unflinchingly provocative tale of a world hurtling into madness.

Genres: Fiction, France, Fantasy, Magical Realism, 20th Century, Literature, Humor

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Raúl Damonte Botana, better known by the nom de plume Copi (for "copito de nieve", Spanish for "little snowflake"), was an Argentine writer, cartoonist, and playwright who spent most of his career in Paris.

Reviews

[Matt]

DNF @ 50%

I have zero desire to finish this. I was enjoying the ridiculousness of it, but a completely unnecessary and graphic scene occurred involving something happening to child that obliterated the fun of the book for me. I kinda thought I knew what I was walking into, but it wasn’t this.

Edgy can be fun, but not in this way. I’m out.

[Uzma Ali]

Talking rats and deadly floods and perverted men in Paris. When I feel my books are the most boring versions of themselves, I know I’m having withdrawals from the surreal, and I must return to my roots, tout de suite, asap, pronto! Yet my attempts to relapse (1. Ghost Roots, 2. City of Rats) have left me…dissatisfied…scraping my tongue to get the bad taste out. It’s not that the latter failed to deliver, as the former did, but rather, it descended into such abject recesses of thought that I found myself ostracized. Like getting denied from a club I’m not freaky enough for. But if this book did have a bouncer, it might have been best. He would have known I didn’t want to witness child r*pe and turned me away, no matter how much I’d admire the atmospheric prose and miniature observations from a small worldly creature. I’d realize this fact and say, “You know what? Thank you!” And we would have nodded and went along our way. Alas reader, that was hypothetical. This is real. Although I’ve not been one to shudder at perversion, the exact fact of our rat narrator detailing gross nonsense with such innocence (for the rat knows nothing of good and bad, those are human contrivances, and my disturbance admittedly reflects the author’s skill) disturbed me (expectedly so). Still, I am who I am. Be that as it may. Be me as I may. I can applaud the character of the “translator” who received these rat letters and transcribed them into this book. I can marvel at the winding pages-long paragraphs that blend internal and external events so smoothly. I can do all these things and still not like it that much. Look at me. Holding two truths at once.

[SJ]

Trust a polite, mannered little rat to throw up a mirror to the most depraved, unhinged and absurd sides of humanity. I have no idea who I would recommend this to, but I can’t deny its inventiveness, even if it did make me want to vomit a couple of times.

[Jensen]

No

[Andy Weston]

Here’s something a bit different.. a bizarre and often grotesque view of life in Paris written by a rat.

It’s a story of survival in the nooks and crannies of the Parisian streets. Translated from the language of rats, the author, Raúl Damonte Botana, describes the chaotic existence of this small community of rats in a captivating and often humorous manner.

With an ankle height perspective, the world feels massive, threatening and oppressive. At the heart of the short novel is the theme of the struggle and resilience of the most vulnerable in society.

If the book needs additional praise, it comes in the form of an introduction by César Aira, one of my favourite contemporary writers. Copi, Raúl Damonte Botana, also lived in Argentina, though Aira describes him..

He was not a Frenchman born in Argentina, not an Argentine exiled in France, nor a Franco-Argentine acting in Italian, nor an Italian in Uruguay.

Aira goes onto say how he was ‘highly undefined’, as he wrote in all of those languages, and lived a good part of his life in each of those countries. Perhaps best known as a cartoonist, he was a playwright, actor and illustrator also. He died in 1987. This was first published in Spanish in 1979, and has only just received a long awaited English translation.

[Audrey Dubois]

AUDREY'S ONE-SENTENCE BOOK REVIEWS

Ratatouille 2: Remy's Cocaine Weekend

[Shalyn Falloon]

City of Rats by Copi is certainly absurd—but not in the playful/surreal way I had hoped for. Instead, the novella leans heavily into the grotesque and depraved. Every now and then the social commentary briefly lands, but unfortunately those moments are rare. For most of the story I found myself more confused and grossed out than engaged. An interesting idea for a story in theory, but in practice mostly off-putting.

[Ashley]

Jessy picked this out at the indie bookstore for me so I could fill my library summer reading BINGO square of a book I discovered at an indie bookstore, and now I'm scared.

[Christian Hall]

City of Rats bills itself as an x-rated ratatouille. Seeing as much of my personality has been shaped by Saturday morning cartoons and having liked Kit Schluter’s book, Cartoons, this seemed like a slam dunk.

However…… around halfway through this book, there is a graphic, disgusting scene involving a very young child that was so off putting and disturbing it made me want to put the book down. This scene is framed by a book with consistently wacky or absurdist humor and refuses to take itself seriously, which makes me wonder why anyone thought it acceptable to include it. Then the character involved in this scene continues to pop up throughout the book and is portrayed as an endearing but misguided man. Confusing, gross, and in deeply poor taste.

I’m now understanding the skeptical look the woman at the book store gave me when I bought this 😮‍💨

[Curtis]

While the rest of us have to work to make a living, the rats are consistently finding new and creative ways to remain mooches. Join them on their adventures to drink, lounge the day away, eat out of dumpsters, marry into a rich political family, and meet Rat Satan. Things get weirder and weirder the deeper this goes, and it's already pretty weird from the get-go.

[Kane Perry]

Hated pretty much every minute of this. Poorly written and poorly translated. The author clearly wrote this as ideas popped into his head as it’s completely nonsensical even within the bounds of the fact we are talking about talking, sentient rats.

Not to mention it features some disgusting scenes that in no way necessary to the story including one thing half way through involving a 2 year old CHILD (I won’t subject anyone by elaborating) which made my stomach turn. I am all for and can appreciate good transgressive literature but there is a line and this book crosses that.

So bad. Would’ve DNF’d it at that half way point if it wasn’t only about 100 pages but lowkey I wish I had because it was a waste of time.

[Christopher Jones]

Simply put, quite special ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Chloe]

While I did wonder what I’d gotten myself into with a back cover blurb promising a “hilarious and disturbing, x-rated fable” told from the perspective of Parisian rats, I was drawn in by the concept and engaging voice of the writing. I found the book very readable and even rather mild until events in the middle with a human toddler character crossed a line, exploiting the innocence of a child for shock value. All I’m saying is a woman would not have written a child in that situation.

If it kept to only animals and human adults, I think this could have been a surreal and amusing adventure, certainly gross and boundary-pushing in many ways, but ultimately 1 or 2 pages did irreparable harm and soiled the story for me. Using a toddler character as an amoral plaything, excused as with everything else by the “human translating correspondence from a rat ignorant of human ways without correction” framing device, was a bridge too far and while I finished the book, I could not in good faith reread or recommend this. Two star backwards = 2 rats for creative premise at least.

[Tony]

3.5 stars, possibly the full 5 were it not for a few overtly grotesque things

[Kyra V]

Nonsensical and not good. Have to agree with all the Goodreads hate on this one.

[Marianna Zimnicka]

A macabre, morbid read. It leaves you with a deep feeling of discomfort, confusion, and disgust. But we shouldn't be made to feel good and comfortable all the time. We should be forced, from time to time, to confront those dark parts of society and this book does exactly that.

[Diego]

Como si Ratatouille lo hubiera escrito Osvaldo Lamborghini.

[Gigi]

Pulls it off by sheer audacity of imagination, which mostly remains endearing in its derangement despite some—ok one in particular, very questionable and frankly unnecessary choice. Nevertheless, fabulist hijinks ensue and accelerate, and remain surprising and mostly fresh: the Queen of Rats singing the national anthem, a snake with a wristwatch, a jail for animals, a talking white whale, the Emir of Parrots in his little outfit, a mobile floating island slowly sinking under the weight of Notre Dame, an Escher city for the rats inhabited for a million years, and so on. My advice would be to read it in a single sitting if you can because it works best when accumulating and stacking its absurd momentum in jenga blocks. For me, I think the tower fell about fifteen pages too early. Still, this was an anarchic and welcome change of pace and a great reminder that in fiction, you really can just sort of “do things” for the hell of it, even really crazy things, often without much justification, so why not get a little weird?

[Nicole Pardus]

I genuinely don’t know how to rate City of Rats, and I’m even less sure whether I can recommend it.

I absolutely believe there is a place for darkness and depravity in books. Horror should be allowed to horrify, and some stories need to be deeply uncomfortable to accomplish what they’re trying to do. But there were moments here where the darkness stopped feeling like it was serving the story and started feeling like shock for shock’s sake or simply because the author wanted to see just how twisted he could make things. There is a line between disturbing me with purpose and making me wonder why I’m being asked to read something, and City of Rats crossed that line for me more than once.

What makes this particularly frustrating is that there’s a strange, whimsical quality to the book that I genuinely enjoyed. Beneath all of the ugliness is this bizarre little world that can feel imaginative, playful, and almost fairytale-like, and those were easily my favorite parts.

So I’m left in a weird place with this one. There are pieces of it I really enjoyed and ideas I found fascinating, but they’re buried beneath so much deliberate depravity that I’m not sure the experience of reading it was worth getting to them.

[Anaia Baker]

The cover is really the best part of this book. In between moments of unnecessary vulgarity, were rare and fleeting moments of poignancy about the intermingling of nature with urban society and how we treat creatures and the lower class which is really the only reason this book gets 2 stars instead of one. These moments, however, rarely sit in the book long enough to have much substance. There were even interesting references to Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno (possibly others such as Robinson Crusoe but maybe that's a stretch), but, once again, we don't linger on them long enough for these references to feel substantial. The book is absolutely absurd but quickly dwindles from being a playful type of absurd to becoming nearly incoherent and overly graphic. (Honestly, why was the Mimile-Vidvn plot even necessary? That alone made this lose a star for me) I guess you can make the argument that the 'joke' is that the rats don't understand how horrific these acts that occur right in front of them are but even that's giving much to the benefit of doubt. I almost dnf'd this book about 20 pages to the end but decided to stick it out. Less vulgarity and more of that rare poignancy would've made this novella a lot better. (Also better female characters since the only ones appear to be bickering 'ball-and-chain-type' rat wives, a delusionally oppressive monarch, and "madwomen" who are lowkey treated like servants).

[Jamie]

Well that uh. That sure was something. Definitely heed the X rating if you're considering reading this book, it could've benefited from some specific content warnings. Overall a bit of a mindfuck, and despite the meandering storytelling, it kind of came full circle in the end.

[Hollace]

Bro what

[Chloe]

★★★★☆

I really enjoyed the completely unhinged nature of Copi’s writing and the sheer absurdity of the story. I’ve seen quite a few reviews focus on how disgusting this book is, but I think that misses part of the point. These are rats. Rats are, by our own human standards, socially disgusting creatures and Copi fully commits to seeing the world from their perspective.

A lot of the graphic and grotesque details are especially interesting because they’re filtered through the innocence and misunderstanding of rats trying to make sense of the human world. What is horrifying or bizarre to us is often simply their reality, and I found that made the more outrageous scenes feel much more purposeful than gratuitous.

Reading this while I was actually in Paris was also a complete treat. I could visualise the city being gradually overtaken by rats and found myself looking at familiar streets and landmarks through the bizarre little world Copi creates. There was something particularly fun about walking around Paris while reading a book in which Paris is essentially becoming a rat civilisation.

It’s strange, grotesque, ridiculous and completely unpredictable but underneath all of that, I genuinely enjoyed the story. Four stars for being one of the more memorable and wonderfully unhinged books I’ve read.

[Jack]

If The Borrowers were made rats in the grimy chic underworld of a Jean Genet novel set in 70s Paris, you might begin to approach this bizarre, apocalyptic book. The tone scampers between the charming and grotesque, at times entirely depraved (I’m not exaggerating), like the sylvanian families thrown into a Clive Barker novel. It runs through plot points a mile a minute and shoots out the other side. Is it a fable, an allegory, an anti-moral lesson? Couldn’t tell you, but it’s certainly memorable.

[Ed Erwin]

OK, but not great. Some really wild things happen, but there isn't much rhyme or reason, just one crazy thing after another. Definitely not for kids, due to a few sexual scenes and a murder here and there. Also some sacrilegious content that didn't move me one way or another.

[Simone]

What DID I READ?? Incredible start, got so weird so fast & uncomfortable as well. But I truly don’t think I’ve ever read anything like it.

[Mary]

fascinating. a wild ride. i wouldn’t recommend any of you read it

[Sylvie Pingeon]

fundamentally Meek and Misunderstood

[Lucy Gustafson]

I really can’t recommend this book to anyone. I feel disappointed in myself for even finishing it. I will say it was very unpredictable. I hope nobody I know ever reads it because I don’t want them to know that I read it all the way through. There’s just something about the chaos and how short it is that keeps you reading. A lot of shock value, written my a man, not exactly sure what the point was. If I were evil I would tell you it was just like Ratatouille and you should read it to your kids. But i’m not, so please don’t do that.

[Facundo Melillo]

Es Copi, siempre es bueno. Acá, quizás, tan delirante pero más medido que otras veces (aunque hay un par de momentos que son de una desfachatez absoluta)