Description

Translation: Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert

Cálidos, pérfidos fulgores gathers the short stories published by Jean Rhys (1890-1979) under the title Sleep It Off, Lady, with the addition of another six pieces by the same author, including the previously unpublished story in Spanish, La carretera imperial (The Imperial Road).

Through them we experience a variety of scenarios and complex emotional states, that recreate those that the narrator went through her hazardous life. During her childhood in the island of Dominica, she developed a precocious sensibility toward conflicts of race, class and genre; the origins of this critical gaze permeated her days as a student of drama and as a chorus girl in England, as well as the hardships she suffered acutely during the interwar periods and the Great War. The subsequent uprooting and the helplessness of old age are transmitted through disturbingly comic scenes.

Rhys’ consummate talent displays a controlled, calculated frivolity and a very fine humor to expose the true depth of her characters’ alienation; their inability to adapt to the world, their perverse cruelty, or their eccentric candor confer these tales an immediate vitality and a perpetual brilliance. The tropics, their opulent and exact description, enrich the ambiguity in the author’s work.