Novices of Lerna

When unambitious scholar Ramon Beltra receives a mysterious invitation to a lucrative six-month fellowship at the University of Lerna in Switzerland, he reluctantly complies with the unusual qualifying paperwork requiring several pages of detailed measurements and photographs of his entire body. Beltra soon finds himself in the deserted university town of Lerna, together with twenty-three other 'novices' subject to the same undisclosed project – all of them doppelgangers of Beltra himself. At first, Beltra is the only one to bristle at the school's dizzying array of rules and regulations, but this all changes with the onset of an uncontrollable epidemic, and the fellows begin dying off one by one...The Novices of Lerna is a meditation on identity, surveillance, and isolation that remains eerily relevant. Shot through with wry humour and tender absurdity, this novella offers a perfect introduction to Ángel Bonomini's incomparable body of work.

'I'm so enthralled by the book that one night, when Borges came over, I proposed we read the only story I hadn't read yet: "The Novices of Lerna." We were dazzled. The story is admirably told, with much wisdom, everything is spot on.' - Letter from Adolfo Bioy Casares to A ngel Bonomini, September 18, 1972 'A ghost of a book that haunts and perplexes, enticing each reader in with its mastery of language and craft.' - Asymptote 'A compelling balance of heady high concepts with pulp thrills...a welcome addition to Argentinian literature in translation - and to Weird fiction the world over.' - Tobias Carroll

A contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges, Angel Bonomini has long been one of the great untranslated writers of Argentine fiction. His masterpiece, The Novices of Lerna, was originally published in 1972, but Bonomini's meditations on identity, surveillance, and isolation remain eerily prescient. In his lifetime, Bonomini was the two-time recipient of the prestigious Premio Konex.