José Donoso

El lugar sin limites / Hell Has No Limits José Donoso

Una novela intensa sobre los límites inciertos de la identidad, con el sello de uno de los grandes novelistas chilenos del siglo XX

Juego implícito con la ambigüedad de los sexos, esta novela breve e intensa de 1966, que José Donoso consideraba la más acabada de las suyas, transcurre en un prostíbulo de pueblo, especie de infierno anodino donde confluyen las pasiones eróticas y los sórdidos juegos de poder que suelen marcar los territorios degradados. La conflitiva historia de la Manuela, el homosexual travestido que regenta el burdel, va desvelando los secretos que se ocultan detrás de las apariencias, al tiempo que expone a una sociedad sumida en la decadencia y la incertidumbre.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

With its stark atmosphere, powerful characterizations, and dazzling alterations of perspective in time and gender, Jose Donoso's early masterwork, Hell Has No Limits, anticipates the qualities of better-known works of this Chilean magic-realist such as The Obscene Bird of Night.

Originally published in 1966, this grimly vivid novel evokes the sweetness and despair during one fateful day in the collective existence of Estacion El Olivo, a decayed community marked for doom as surely as Donoso's central character, the transvestite dancer/prostitute la Manuela, whose virginal daughter operates the brothel out of which she/he works.

La Manuela is menaced both by his would-be protector, the local politician/land baron who wants to raze Estacion El Olivo for his expanding vineyards, and by a coldly vengeful trucker, nursing a lifetime of hurts, deprivation, and suppressed sexual ambiguity. The lives of this trio - past and present - are indelibly forged in the novel's stunning climax, which combines a shocking act of violence in the present with a bizarre erotic encounter from decades before.