Albina and the Dog-Men
About this ebook
When two women—an amnesiac goddess and her protector, a leather-tough woman called Crabby—arrive in a Chilean desert town, Albina’s otherworldly allure and unfettered sensuality turn men into wild beasts. Chased by a clubfooted corrupt cop, evil corporate overlords, giant-hare-riding narcos, and Himalayan cultists, Albina and Crabby must find a magical cactus that will cure Albina and the men’s monstrous affliction before the town consumes itself in an orgy of lust and violence.
Albina and the Dog-Men is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s darkly funny, shocking, and surreal hybrid of mystical folktale, road novel, horror story, and social parable, ultimately uniting in a universal story of love against the odds and what makes us human.
Praise for Albina and the Dog-Men
“Deeply psychological and mysterious, the book will stimulate the imagination of the reader's mind to the extreme.”
—Marina Abramović
“In his latest novel, Jodorowsky builds on his multi-decade long assault of the public imagination . . . a fantastical and genre-defying parable of love and friendship. . . . Throughout this dark dream of a novel, Jodorowsky's writing is comic and occasionally mesmerizing. It is also ripe with horror and philosophical questions about what it means to belong, everywhere and nowhere. And while some of the subject matter is disturbing, it often carries the air of something ancient that you read children by a fire. For years Jodorowsky has proven the intensity of his imagination, and how far he is willing to go to present his singular vision to the world. He is a fully realized artist whose tales demand attention. At its core, Albina and the Dog-Men is a love story about two people committed to one another's survival and to discovering their potential. And, as with life, it is sometimes only through the weathering of a storm that our true capacities are made clear.”
—Juan Vidal, NPR Books
“[Albina and the Dog-Men] may be the ultimate piece of Jodorowsky arcana, a mind-bending adventure story on par with his wildest cinematic visions. . . . A surrealist novel par excellence, Albina and the Dog-Men is a dream, a prophecy, a hallucination, and a transfiguration such as only Jodorowsky could induce.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Composed like a feverish fairytale, Albina and the Dog-Men is a South American parable of self-acceptance and belonging that is fueled by prurience and colored with vivid, hallucinogenic details. . . . No moment of Jodorowsky’s book is at all predictable or familiar, and those who have a taste for the uncanny will be in awe over its undulations into strange, even godly, territory. The sensuality of the prose thickens as Albina’s situation becomes more tenuous, resulting in heady and appealing constructions. . . . As Albina and her followers traipse over barren lands and into forests protected by ancient Incans, the novel winds toward territory both magical and needfully human. The surreal methods of redemption in the novel’s final pages prove both glorious and moving. Jodorowsky’s is a work of unforgettable weirdness, a work whose movements are directed by sometimes violent mysticism and whose final lessons may speak to all who have ever dreamed of transformation.”
—Michelle Anne Schingler, Foreword Reviews, Five-Star Review
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, musician, comics writer, and spiritual guru, best known for his avant-garde films including Fando and Lis (1968), El Topo (1970)—which became a cult hit and inaugurated the “midnight movie” phenomenon—The Holy Mountain (1973), and Santa Sangre (1989). As is documented in the recent film Jodorowsky’s Dune, in 1975 he began to work on a colossal adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune—which was to star Orson Welles and Salvador Dalí and to be scored by Pink Floyd—but was never made (a later version was filmed by David Lynch). Recently, after 23 years away from the screen, Jodorowsky released his autobiographical film The Dance of Reality, about growing up in a Chilean mining town. Jodorowsky himself, his wife Valerie, and his sons Brontis, Axel, and Adan have all appeared in his films.
A circus clown and a puppeteer in his youth, Alejandro Jodorowsky left for Paris at the age of 23 to study mime with Marcel Marceau. He also befriended the surrealists Roland Topor and Fernando Arrabal, and in 1962 these three created the "Panic Movement" in homage to the mythical god Pan. He became a specialist in the art of the Tarot and prolific author of novels, poetry, short stories, essays, works on the Tarot and “psychomagic” healing, and over thirty successful comic books, working with such highly regarded comic book artists as Moebius and Bess. Restless Books will publish the first English translations of three of his best known books: Donde mejor canta un pájaro (Where the Bird Sings Best), El niño del jueves negro (The Son of Black Thursday), and Albina y los hombres perro (Albina and the Dog Men).
Alfred MacAdam is professor of Latin American literature at Barnard College-Columbia University. He has translated works by Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Juan Carlos Onetti, José Donoso, and Jorge Volpi among others. He recently published an essay on the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa included in the Cambridge Companion to Autobiography.
