“The Holy Mountain” meets “Ratatouille” in this X-rated fable by French provocateur Copi
Life isn’t easy for a Parisian rat. But Gouri is getting by: with his best friend Rakä, he’s got a small business selling worms to pigeons, a cozy bachelor nest at the local florist, an―as spring blooms in the City of Lights―a budding love interest. But after a double date goes horribly wrong, Gouri and Rakä, along with the royal Rat Court―the princesses Iris and Catarina, and their hilariously unpredictable mother, the Queen of Rats―find themselves adrift on the Seine, accessories after the fact to a double homicide, using their new ally, a small human child, as a life raft. From there, the hijinks metastasize. French police collar the gang along with Mimile, a sadistic murderer who never remembers his crimes. But having escaped lock-up (from the cell they'd been tossed into with their arch-enemies, a snake and a terrier), they pay a visit to the God of Man (a homeless recluse hiding out in the Sainte-Chapelle), but then the giant Rat Devil makes his appearance, full of fiery flatulence and threatening cataclysm…
Told in a series of letters purportedly written in rat language and posted from Gouri to his former master, City of Rats is the second novel by French-Argentine exile, novelist, cartoonist, playwright, actor, and queer provocateur Copi to be translated into English and perhaps his most madcap work, an X-rated fable where his high-velocity prose smashes through societal taboos―moral, sexual, or otherwise―like a bullet train hitting a glass house. Whimsical, smutty, and surprisingly profound, City of Rats will leave no reader unscathed, and every reader awestruck.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1939, Raúl Damonte Botana derived his sobriquet Copi from a nickname his grandmother gave him, “copito de nieve,” or “little snowflake.” At six, he went into exile with his family in Uruguay and eventually settled in Paris, where he was a cartoonist, performer, playwright, and novelist until his death from an AIDS-related illness in 1987.
Kit Schluter is the author of Cartoons (City Lights, 2024) and has recently translated books from the French and Spanish by Copi, bruno darío, Rafael Bernal, Mario Levrero, Marcel Schwob, Olivia Tapiero, and Enrique Vila-Matas. He lives in Mexico City.
César Aira was born in Coronel Pringles, Argentina in 1949, and has lived in Buenos Aires since 1967. He won the 2021 Formentor Prize and was shortlisted for the 2015 Booker International Prize.
