Perpetual Prison

SHORT NOVEL. ANAGRAMA, 2007. 160 PAGES.

Two extraordinary short novels –Perpetual Prison and An Encounter in Saint-Nazaire– written almost simultaneously make up this book in which all the possible variants of the genre converge: autobiography, detective story, historical tale, theoretical fiction, diary, love story and fantastic literature. Shut away in a hotel room, writer Stephen Stevenson devotes his life to constructing in his journal a model of the order of the world; through this exhaustive classification of things, the writer who will occupy the room next will be able to tell his story and know the future.With this book Piglia has created a circular form in which each point refers to another in the linear narrative, giving rise to an unusual structure in which all the events are intertwined.