In the tradition of such great Latin American magic realists as Jorge Amada, Sergio Kokis recreates the magic world of a child in Brazil.

The novel is told from the point of view of a Brazilian painter in exile somewhere in the northern climes - man who longs for the warmth and vibrancy of his childhood.

But his childhood and adolescence were not easy. Torn between a deeply religious (and superstitious) mother and his father, a man of science and reason, the young man survives his home life, life at boarding school, and life abroad to become an artist and a person in his own right.

Funhouse (Le pavillon des miroirs in French) has won four major literary awards in Quebec: Grand Prix du livre de Montrl, Prix de L’Acadie des lettres du Quec, Prix Quec-Paris, and Prix Desjardins.

Sergio Kokis is the author of eight novels. His first, Le pavillon des miroirs (translated as Funhouse) won four major literary prizes in 1994. L'art du maquillage (translated here as The Art of Deception) appeared in 1997.

W. Donald Wilson was born in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, in 1938. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Trinity College, Dublin, and has taught at universities in the West Indies and England, and Canada. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

Sergio Kokis' profile page

"This is an admirable book; a fascinating novel exuberant, rich in human experience, a hymn to sensuality, and an overload of the senses." - Citation from the Prix de L'Acadmie des lettres du Qubec

"[A] dispairing picture of Brazilian urban and rural proverty [that] is convincing and heartbreaking."

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