Staff Pick
A veritable primer for the poetry of the world, this Argentinian critic's curious novel is a bits-and-bobs potpourri of anecdotes featuring an ever-changing cast — artists, poets, soldiers, priests, and at least one space dog among them — interspersed with fanciful and figurative musings. Fireflies reads like a sacred scroll on the celestial and the earthbound, a floating reference text charting the unnameable interconnectedness of the cosmos. Sagasti covers a whole lot of ground in a short span and the result is most certainly a trip worth taking. Recommended By Justin W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A lyrical and philosophical exploration of seemingly unrelated people and events in modern history, drawing them together to form a whole.
How do we even begin to narrate the history of the world? Where do we start, and where do we end? Fireflies is Sagasti's bold and original attempt to answer these questions. Roaming across time and geography, he lights on an eclectic array of characters and events that at first glance seem unrelated, and teases out their stories to reveal unexpected points of contact between them. Stanley Kubrick, Joseph Beuys, Antoine de Saint-Exup ry, Neil Armstrong, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Beatles, Japanese poets, Brazilian priests, Russian cosmonauts and many more cross these pages, and Sagasti finds common threads that weave them together into a single narrative.
The fireflies themselves perhaps provide the key to understanding this book. They become a metaphor for the resistance of certain luminous moments, certain twinkling fragments of history, to the passing of time. They remind us that events do not always simply disappear neatly into the darkness, but rather remain, floating in the air, lighting up the night sky indefinitely. Sagasti shows us that the present moment, like this novel, is a tapestry woven of a multiplicity of times.
Using his unique, poetic and keenly observant style, Sagasti transforms the accidents of history into a single, lyrical constellation, and for the reader it is an extraordinary sight.
Synopsis
A lyrical and philosophical exploration of seemingly unrelated people and events in modern history, drawing them together to form a whole.