"Red Lips" by: [Argentina] Manuel Puig Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press

Introduction · · · · · ·
A postmodern literary classic that influenced Wong Kar-wai, Haruki Murakami, David Foster Wallace, and Latin American literary idol Puig! The source of inspiration for Days of Being Wild, a vivid and sad tango, a puzzle game of love and fate.

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【Content Introduction】

In 1969, "Red Lips" was serialized in a magazine for a total of sixteen issues.

Letters, diaries, newspaper clippings, even police files, family albums, tarot readings,

Collage together a complicated love triangle.

The protagonist Juan Carlos is a charming playboy.

But he is already dead when the book opens.

This death is like a thread that pulls out the tangled knot between lovers...

Accompanied by ten tango dances, the investigation of crimes against human desire begins:

In the game of love and death,

They are hunters of desire, but also prey of fate.

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【Editor's recommendation】

🍷 Puig, the Latin American literary idol and a representative work of prodigal literature

Born on the prairie, he spent his life wandering around the world, enjoying sensual pleasures;

I studied film, served in the military, washed dishes, and taught Spanish;

Literature, music, and film, he has a wide range of interests and incorporates the best of all into his novel writing;

The Chinese translation of Manuel Puig's masterpiece is out of print for many years and is now available again!

🍷 Collage style, stream of consciousness, polyphony: montage of desire, puzzle game of love and fate

There is no traditional novel text here, only:

Love letters that were burned, archives that have been sealed for many years,

Humble confession, painful condolence, heartbreaking monologue...

Puig won't tell you the ins and outs, you have to do it yourself:

Sort out the timeline, infer the relationship between characters, and use tarot cards to help the protagonist tell his fortune...

You have to solve the puzzle yourself and become a part of the story.

Searching for a way out of the maze, just like the trapped men and women.

🍷 A sad tango that takes you back to the bohemian 1930s and lets you experience the cruel youth of Latin America

The setting of popular novels and the form of postmodern literature are what Puig is best at writing.

Two men and six women, with love surging, who does the township civil servant who is the center of attention love?

A lonely young woman wrote a letter to confide her feelings, but it caused another storm?

I suggest you put aside all your conservative ideas before reading, because the people in the story:

He is vain, greedy, selfish, and a playboy...but he still dances lively and vividly.

Dance, everyone will disperse eventually.

🍷 Amazing editing and flowing narrative, a charming prodigal and erotic dance under the shadow of death:

Postmodern classics that influenced Wong Kar-wai, Haruki Murakami, and David Foster Wallace

From Days of Being Wild to Blossoming Flowers, all of Wong Kar-wai's tricks are seen in Red Lips:

The male protagonist Juan Carlos can be both Ah Fei and Ah Bao...

Wong Kar-wai: "A great work... He is the one who has the greatest influence on my filmmaking."

Haruki Murakami: "There are strong similarities between his literature and my literature."

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【Celebrity Recommendation】

He (Puig) is the one who has had the greatest influence on my filmmaking... His best work is "Red Lips", a great work.

——Wong Kar-wai

Manuel Puig is one of my favorite writers, he has a very free imagination, and I find strong similarities between his literature and mine.

——Haruki Murakami

Maybe I belong to a group of writers who are heavily influenced by postmodernism—I mean Calvino—or Latin American writers like Borges, Márquez, and Puig.

—David Foster Wallace

The crimes recounted in Red Lips encapsulate Puig’s narrative world, and the shifting of deaths and blame more clearly than in the novel as a whole weaves together the hierarchies that sustain the intrigue and drama that go hand in hand with a world of rigid social distinctions.

—Ricardo Piglia