“[Bomarzo] is a novel that will make any reader happy…. It’s a novel about art and a novel about decadence, about the luxury of writing novels and about the exquisite uselessness of the novel…. And of course it’s also a novel to be read aloud, with the whole family gathered around.”
—Roberto Bolaño
“When the true history of our literature—and not an apology for it—comes to be written, Manuel Mujica Lainez will at last be seen as a benefactor. He brings back to contemporary writing the sense of destiny, of adventure with its hopes and fears, the tradition of Stevenson, Hugo, and—why not?—Ariosto…. An attentive reader of the great Russians and of Henry James, Mujica Lainez gives us that special delight of intimate portraiture, of watching the gradual unfolding of personality.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
“Mujica Lainez’s novel is a literary crocodile, shaped like itself, of its own color . . . There is no reason Bomarzo should be less well known in English than Hopscotch or One Hundred Years [of Solitude].”
—Michael Robbins, Book Post
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