Asphodels
Bernardo Couto Castillo
Translated by Jessica Sequiera
In Greek mythology, the asphodel is a flower associated with death; the souls of ordinary mortals are sent to the Asphodel Meadows, vast fields of the underworld.
In the twelve stories of Asphodels, Mexican author Bernardo Couto Castillo (1879-1901), a cult figure in Mexico due to his short life and French-influenced Decadent writings, explores death in its many varieties, from Lady Death wandering the streets of the city in merciless search of her next victim, to a hypochondriac who goes mad out of fear of death, to an ultra-refined killer turning to murder due to the beauty of its “symphony in White and Red”, to the extraordinary final metaphysical account of the torture of a soul.
Although asphodels do not make a single appearance in this collection, they are like death itself: invisible, everywhere.
Asphodels, originally published in 1897, was the only book to appear in the author’s lifetime. Presented here for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Jessica Sequeira, it will be sure to gratify lovers of Decadent fiction, horror and modernismo.
About the Author
Bernardo Couto Castillo (1879-1901) was born in Mexico City, to a wealthy family. After leaving school at the age of fourteen, he started to contribute to newspapers and magazines, and plunged himself into literary and artistic life. In the meantime, he worked as a clerk at the Treasury of the Ministry of Finance. He published his first story in El Partido Liberal; later fiction would appear in El Nacional, El Mundo and La Revista Azul. He was also a founder of the Revista Moderna, a pioneering magazine in literary modernismo. Couto Castillo lived for two years in Paris, and visited Germany and Switzerland. At the age of twenty-one, he died of pneumonia, a complication of addictions to alcohol and bromine. Asphodels, the only book to appear in his lifetime, was published in 1897.
About the Translator
Jessica Sequeira was born in San Jose, California in 1989, and currently lives in Santiago de Chile. Her works include the novel A Furious Oyster (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), and the collection of essays Other Paradises: Poetic Approaches to Thinking in a Technological Age (Zero).
Her translations include Teresa Wilms Montt’s Sentimental Doubts (Snuggly Books, 2020), Enrique Gómez Carrillo’s Sentimental Stories (Snuggly Books, 2019), Rafaela Contreras’s The Turquoise Ring and Other Stories (Snuggly Books, 2019), Adolfo Couve’s When I Think of My Missing Head (Snuggly Books, 2018),and Liliana Colanzi’s Our Dead World (Dalkey Archive).
Paperback, 150 pages
Release date, December 1, 2020
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-050-0
USA: $14.00
Hardback, 152 pages. Limited to 80 copies
Release date, December 1, 2020
USA: $28.00