Natural history / a novel / Carlos Fonseca ; translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell.
"Just before the dawn of the new millennium, a curator at a New Jersey museum of natural history receives an unusual invitation from a celebrated fashion designer. She shares the curator's fascination with the hidden forms of the animal kingdom -- with camouflage and subterfuge -- and she proposes that they collaborate on an exhibition, the form of which itself remains largely obscure, even as they enter into a strange relationship marked by evasion and elision. Seven years later, after the death of the designer, the curator recovers the archive of their never-completed project. During a long night of insomnia, he finds within the archive a series of clues to the true story of the designer's family, a mind-bending puzzle that winds from Haifa, Israel, to bohemian 1970s New York to the Latin American jungle. On the way, he discovers a cast of characters whose own fixations interrogate the unstable frontiers between art, science, politics, and religion: an aging photographer, living nearly alone in an abandoned mining town where subterranean fires rage without end, who creates models of ruined cities; a former model turned conceptual artist -- and a defendant in a trial over the very nature and purpose of art; a young indigenous boy who has received a vision of the end of the world. Reality is a curtain, as the curator realizes, and to draw it back is to reveal the theater of obsession. Natural History is the portrait of a world trapped between faith and irony, between tragedy and farce." -- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780374216306
- ISBN: 0374216304
- Physical Description: 303 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
- Edition: First American edition
- Publisher: New York, NY : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
- Copyright: ©2020
Content descriptions
- General Note:
- "Originally published in Spanish in 2017 by Anagrama, Spain, as Museo animal"--Title page verso.
Search for related items by subject
- Subject:
- Museum exhibits > Fiction.
Museum curators > Fiction.
Photographers > Fiction.
Artists > Fiction.
Visions > Fiction. - Genre:
- Fiction.
Novels.
Available copies
- 7 of 7 copies available at NC Cardinal. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Madison County Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 7 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mars Hill Library | FIC FON (Text) | 30229101177995 | Adult Fiction | Available | - |
