Delirium

by Laura Restrepo (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $16.95

  Aguliar returns home after a four-day business trip to discover that his beloved wife has gone mad. Desperate to rescue Agustina from her sudden, devastating insanity, Aguliar delves back into her shadowy past. Other narratives are intertwined with his frantic search for the truth; that of Midas, a flamboyant drug-trafficker and Agustina's former lover, and Agustina's splintered memories of her own troubled childhood. The key to her madness lies buried deep in a Colombian story of money, power and corruption.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $7.56

  Aguilar, an unemployed literature professor who has resorted to selling dog food for a living, returns home after a three-day business trip to discover that his wife, Agustina, has gone mad. He doesn't know what has happened during his absence, and in his search for answers, he slowly uncovers profound and shadowy secrets hidden deep in his wife's past. On one level, Delirium reads like a detective story, as the reader pieces together information to find out what caused Agustina's madness. But it is also a remarkably nuanced novel whose currents run much deeper, delving into the minds of four unique characters: Aguilar, a husband passionately in love with his wife and determined to rescue her from madness; Agustina, a beautiful woman from a Colombian upper-class family who is caught in the throes of delirium; Midas, Agustina's former lover and a prominent drug-trafficker and money-launderer; and Nicolas, Agustina's grandfather, who also went mad at the end of his life. Through the mixing of these distinct voices, Laura Restrepo creates a searing portrait of a society battered by war and corruption, as well as an intimate look at the daily lives of people struggling to stay sane in an unstable society. It is an ambitious and deeply affecting masterwork by one of Latin America's most important contemporary voices.