{
    "id": 534439,
    "slug": "larva-a-midsummer-nights-babel-julian-rios",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "Larva: A Midsummer Night's Babel",
    "subtitle": null,
    "collection_title": null,
    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "A striking reassessment of the Don Juan myth. A literary tour de force, this extraordinary novel is told in single-minded pursuit of double meanings, but it is serious play. Larva is a rollicking account of a masquerade party in an abandoned mansion in London. Milalias (disguised as Don Juan) searches for Babelle (as Sleeping Beauty) through a linguistic funhouse of puns and wordplay recalling Joyce's Finnegans Wake. A mock-scholarly commentary reveals the backgrounds of the masked revellers, while Rios' allusive language shows that words too wear masks, hiding an astonishing range of further meanings and implications. Larva revives a Hispanic tradition repressed for centuries by introducing the English tradition of puns, palindromes and acrostics (a word puzzle in which certain letters in each line form a word or words) and establishes Rios as the most accomplished successor (in any language) to Joyce.",
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 545,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "1990-01-01",
    "publication_date_latest": "1990-01-01",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [],
    "ratings_count": 0,
    "read_count": 0,
    "review_count": 0,
    "favorite_count": 0,
    "reading_status_read_count": 0,
    "reading_status_reading_count": 0,
    "reading_status_want_to_read_count": 0,
    "rating_average": null,
    "ratings_distribution": {
        "1": 0,
        "2": 0,
        "3": 0,
        "4": 0,
        "5": 0
    },
    "created_at": "2025-09-19T14:41:54+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-31T00:45:13+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 5452,
        "slug": "dalkey-archive-press",
        "name": "Dalkey Archive Press",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:22:17+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T14:41:52+00:00"
    },
    "contributors": [],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [],
    "campaigns": []
}