Miguel Ildefonso: Hotel Lima [Hotel Lima]

The latest addition to my website is Miguel Ildefonso‘s Hotel Lima [Hotel Lima]. Our hero/narrator is called Dante and we follow him in his journey underground, though his underground is merely the seedier parts of Lima, where he meets prostitutes, drug addicts, strange women and, in particular, poètes maudits. He comes in contact with an underground organisation called the Not-Poets, who detonate bombs around Lima and leave poetry rather than political slogans. He meets one member, Rosa, who, he says is the ugliest woman he has ever met, though he does have sex with her. She offers him free board and lodging to work on his latest novel – he has written two successful novels but, partially because of alcoholism, had not written anything recently. He declines. He also follows the lives of famous (in Peru) artists and poètes maudits. Ultimately, it is a poetical novel about a Peruvian writer who has lost his way and cannot seem to find it. It has not been translated into any other language.

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