Excéntricos

Alchemists ruined by wormwood, fighters who face tigers in hand-to-hand combat before turning to asceticism, reckless aeronauts landing on the rooftops of Parisian department stores, Buddhist Cossack generals, fasting polyglots, unhappy aviators, inventors of ethereal cannons, monochrome painters devoted to Saint Rita... From Cary Grant to Lovecraft, from Salgari to Pancho Villa and Buster Keaton, or from Arletty to Therese Neumann, there is no doubt that the forty-two characters Alvi portrays in these pages are eccentric and extravagant, but above all, men and women whose irrepressible zest for life embodies the protean potential of the human spirit.