The Museum of Useless Efforts
1983
First Published
3.71
Average Rating
163
Number of Pages
In The Museum of Useless Efforts Cristina Peri Rossi renders familiar, everyday situations uncanny through lyrical reinterpretations; at the same time, she somehow makes the uncanny appear quite ordinary. Crafting peculiar—and sometimes claustrophobically small—worlds, Peri Rossi explores the universal themes of desire, violence, and truth and the simultaneous and contradictory human capacities to repress and resist, speak and silence, desire and ignore. In these tales an insomniac is tormented by a stubborn lamb that refuses to jump over the fence; the momentary hesitation of a man on a crowded subway staircase who forgets whether he was going up or down unleashes pandemonium; and a patient receives a frantic call from his psychoanalyst, distraught that his wife has taken a new lover.
Avg Rating
3.71
Number of Ratings
199
5 STARS
23%
4 STARS
38%
3 STARS
29%
2 STARS
9%
1 STARS
2%
goodreads
Author
Cristina Peri Rossi
Author · 20 books
Uruguayan novelist, poet, and author of short stories. Considered a leading light of the post-1960s period of prominence of the Latin-American novel, she has written more than 37 works. She was born in Montevideo, Uruguay but was exiled in 1972, and moved to Spain, where she became a citizen in 1975. As of 2005[update] she lives in Barcelona, where she continues to write fiction and works as a journalist. She studied at the University of the Republic.
