From the date of its original publication in Spanish, The Tattoo Hunter established itself as a new classic of the city by the Bay. Now in translation, this neo-noir novel is finally available to the English language reader. The Tattoo Hunter is a powerful account of the dark side of sexuality and its effects on human consciousness. Written in an enticing poetic style, this story of curiosity and seduction takes us from the very origins of the Cretan labyrinth to the labyrinth drawn on the soft skin of its most intriguing character, the Countess, in a desperate hunt for meaning.
The elegant prose and provocative atmosphere immerse us in a world of velvet, Goth women, and red wine spilled on naked bodies, as we follow the steps of this unique, intellectual hunter.
Review: "If Michel Foucault wrote fiction he might have composed something resembling The Tattoo Hunter."
-The San Francisco Chronicle
"The Tattoo Hunter is perfervid, feline, a ritualized exposй of victimhood, of deceit and its tyrannical twin, the truth."
-Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
"Acosta's novel is the sign of a new Mexican literature, of a new, unknown violence that we did not expect in Latin America. This is the book San Francisco was lacking."
-pбgina/12, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Bio: JUVENAL ACOSTA is a fiction writer, poet, and journalist born in Mexico in 1961. He has edited two anthologies of contemporary Mexican poetry published by City Lights Books. The original version of The Tattoo Hunter (El Cazador de Tatuajes), his first novel, was published in Mexico City to wide critical acclaim. This fall, The Violence of Velvet (Terciopelo Violento), his second novel, will be released by Planeta Press. His essay on bullfighting, "The Gaze and the Blood", was translated into English by Gregory Rabassa and published by Periplus Books in London as an introduction to Tauromachia, a book of photography. Acosta writes for Cambio, a weekly magazine published by Gabriel Garcнa Mбrquez in Mexico City, directs the M.F.A. in Writing and Consciousness at the New College of California, and teaches creative writing at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco.
