A phantasmagorical mixture of religious mysticism and eroticism, bound up with the mythic origins of civilization, and taking in everything from shamanic art to Bach’s Art of the Fugue.
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Fact and fantasy collide in this visionary, literary “feast” starring historical Norwegian poet and dramatist Dagny Juel (1867-1901), a beautiful woman whose life found her falling victim to one deranged male fantasy after another. An inspiration to such celebrities as Edward Munch, August Strindberg, and Gustav Vigeland, the “Queen” of Berlin bohemia in the 1890s, she met her death at the hands of her lover in a Tbilisi hotel room in 1901. Here, her story becomes a phantasmagorical mixture of religious mysticism and eroticism, bound up with the mythic origins of civilization, and taking in everything from shamanic art to Bach’s Art of the Fugue, from gnosticism to modernism, from magic to linguistics. Also present at this feast are Joseph Stalin, his terrorist friend Camo, the guru and composer George Gurdjieff, the Georgian poet Vazha Pshavela, August Strindberg, and and Gornahor, a raven-like creature from the planet Saturn.
"Karumidze deserves much praise for writing such a profound, complex, and deeply original work of literary art."–Tweed's Magazine