Esto's Lover

First novel by the Romanian writer Constantin Severin.

Synopsis

In March of 1975 the famous Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato (Esto), falls in love, at the age of 62, with a young physicist, Maria Rustin, 36, at the University of Buenos Aires. Their affair, an impressive story in this city of “el tango,” catalyzed by a touching need for communication, is facilitated by the appearance of a new device, the fax machine.

During their heated correspondence Esto is surprised to find in Maria a potentially gifted novelist. He encourages her to write a book. Both lovers experience radical changes in their inner lives, as the affair progresses. After it has gone on, however, for several months Maria's husband, Daniel Rustin, an Oxford physicist (interested in teleportation and the effects of sound on matter), learning of it, decides to make it public. By the end of the novel he succeeds in moving objects with the help of sounds. The reader must discover for himself how Daniel accomplishes this and its effects upon a beautiful love story.
The narrator of the magic-hyperrealist novel is Maria herself, who describes actual events in the lives of well-known people in Buenos Aires, in her native region, Bucovina, and elsewhere in world history. She includes details regarding two secret societies founded in the Middle Ages to promote the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci.

Their shadowy masters, Right Hand Circle and Left Hand Circle, move across the boundaries of time to instruct Leonardo himself and such modern masters such as Picasso, Dali, Brauner and Warhol.

Under their influence subliminal messages are introduced into works of art. We learn how Left Hand Circle causes Leonardo to create the ''Mona Lisa,'' why
Victor Brauner loses an eye in Paris. We learn too of a crime committed in Bucharest. Finally, Maria must assume the role of private detective to reveal how certain agents of the Left Hand Circle in 1989 victimize her own childhood friend, Mihai Driscu, the well-known Romanian art critic.

Secondary characters in this spectacular narrative include J. L. Borges, Astor Piazzola, Xul Solar, Henri Coanda, Victor Brauner and Ernesto Kahan, most of whom had been living, at one time or another, in a city where the soul of tango is itself a major character. Love, passion, mystery, art and music co-mingle as essential ingredients of this amazing novel.

The manuscript will be available in Romanian very soon. (2008)

World rights for sale. Please contact Marit Bödtker,
Bodtker Yuniku Agency,[email protected]. tel. +47 908 23045
Read more about Constantin Severin on www.yuniku.no

Esto's Lover is sold by Bodtker Yuniku Agency in 2008 to Curtea Veche in Romania