In normal, everyday tones, a story is told by the perpetrator of triple incest: first with his mother as a child and a young man, then with his daughter as he grows into mature manhood, and finally with his sister in middle age. This primeval...
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An blank, affectless voice recounts a history of triple incest: protagonist with mother, during his childhood and adolescence; protagonist with daughter, during his maturity; protagonist with sister in their shared middle age. This primeval fairytale burns like dry ice, quiet but scalding, as the narrator switches roles and family relations. He approaches his fate with an eerie metaphysical lucidity, and seems innocent as to the perverse nature of his taboo attachments, and the theatrical artifice with which he pursues them. An unselfconscious Sade? Or a Maldoror playing coy?
Belgian-born Alain Arias-Misson was raised in the United States and has also lived in North Africa, Spain, Italy, France, and Central America. He has published six novels and four art books and exhibited visual art around the world. Theatre of Incest, his fourth novel, has been compared to Arrabal, Klossowski, and Vargas Llosa; Walter Abish called it “an unsettling dark familial jewel,” and Eugene Wildman wrote, “Arias-Misson may be the most innovative writer around today.”