Lexicon of Affinities

<p><strong>A prowl through words reveals the unstable character of the cosmos.</strong></p><p>With entries as varied as ‘elbow’, ‘Ophelia’, ‘progress’, the painter Giorgio Morandi, ‘chess’, ‘Eulalia’ (a friend of the author’s aunt), and ‘unicorn’, Ida Vitale constructs a dictionary of her long and passionately engaged artistic life. Taking the reader by the arm, she invites us to become her confidant, sharing her remarkable 20th century as a member of a storied generation of Latin American writers, of whom she is the last remaining alive. It’s a compendium of friendship, travel, reading, and the endless opportunities she found for 'the joyful possibility of creation.' Like every dictionary, <em>Lexicon of Affinities</em> seeks to impose order on chaos, even if in its exuberant, whimsical profusion it lays bare the unstable character of the cosmos.</p>