AUTUMN & WINTER SONATAS (Empire of the Senses S)

Fiction. The story of a Don Juan for our times, one who is aware of earlier Don Juan's. This novel, part of a cycle, is built on shifting ground -- the erotic moves between the grotesque, the beautiful, the absurd -- and that is precisely what gives them their strange, potent charm. "Valle-Inclan was born in Galicia in 1866 and died there in 1936. He spent most of his adult life in Madrid writing [and] ... participating vociferously in the literary circles that met in many of the cafes. Like his character Bradomin he was (at least for a time) a Carlist, or claimed to be. However, with typical unpredictability, he later espoused republicanism, later still, became an anarchist and, on his deathbed, ... refused the last rites." (Margaret Jull Costa, "Afterword"). Translated by Margaret Jull Costa.