Soul's Infarct

“Another splendid book by Diamela Eltit, Chile’s most celebrated experimental writer. In collaboration with renowned photographer Paz Errázuriz, Eltit questions the lovers’ discourse—how this magic is born, how it is sustained and nourished—and roots her perspective in those outcasts whom society has condemned to the margins. These abject figures, locked for life in a psychiatric institution for the poor and insane, are the protagonists of this beautiful book about love; they are the guardians of what Eltit describes as ‘that mysterious symbolic disorder’ which nothing in medical science can ever come close to explaining. Soul’s Infarct is certain to embrace the reader who in turn will recall the power of love as a moment in which the senses override the intellect, an instant when we surrender ourselves to the tremulous body of desire, to hunger for the other to reach a transgressive bliss. Award-winning translator Ronald Christ is unique in his ability to tease out the subtle rhythms of Eltit’s text and bring to English-language readers the sublime poetic prose of Soul’s Infarct.”—Francine Masiello, University of California at Berkeley

“Binocular: visual and verbal lenses, individual but parallel in focus, Soul’s Infarct brings up close—brings us up close—to the distanced, the unmentionable, the unsightly: crazy people, who yet are people in love, witnessing their immense emotion before Paz Errázuriz’s welcoming camera, conveying their unknown and unknowable selves and histories through Diamela Eltit’s transformative, recording word. Soul’s Infarct is doubly unique.”—Catalina Parra