Asleep in the Sun

Lucio, a normal man in a normal (nosy) city neighborhood with normal problems with his wife (not the easiest person to get along with) and family and job (he lost it) finds he has a much bigger problem: his wife is a dog. At first, it doesn't seem like such a problem, because the German shepherd inhabiting his wife's body is actually a good deal more agreeable than his wife herself, now occupying the body of the same German shepherd in a mental hospital run by scientists who, it appears, have designs on the whole neighborhood. But then Lucio has a sense, however confused, of what's right, which is an even bigger problem yet. Asleep in the Sun is the great work of the Argentine master Adolfo Bioy Casares's later years. Like his legendary Invention of Morel, it is an intoxicating mixture of fantasy, sly humor, and menace. Whether read as a fable of modern politics, a meditation on the elusive parameters of the self, or a most unusual love story, Bioy's book is an almost scarily perfect comic turn, as well as a pure delight. A sweet, increasingly surreal fable… The fantastic events seem less momentous than the almost saintly likeableness of Lucio, one of those people whom things happen to with a cockeyed vengeance. Levine's slangy, salt-of-the-earth translation helps to make this shapely and appealing. --Kirkus Reviews Its broader themes of compatibility and well-being, and man's attachment to place and routine, connect it with such older twentieth-century masterworks as Mann's The Magic Mountain. --Choice A witty and ironic comment on our desires and the social structures we have created. This tale… weds laughter and terror in haunting fashion. --Publishers Weekly Introduction by James Sallis