Eclipse Fever reads remarkably like a translation of a novel by Argentine Julio Cortazar or some other Latin writer. Given Abish's control of language, this cannot be an accident, especially since his previous novel "How German is It?" had the same odd effect of reading like a translation of a modern German novel, by Thomas Bernhard perhaps. Even the melodramatic aspects of Eclipse Fever (as noted by other reviewers) have to be understood as deliberately resonating with the characteristic excesses of Latin-American fiction. In other words, Eclipse Fever is a complex, allusive book with a meta-message aimed at very cosmopolitan readers; the previous amazon reviewers, including the editors, seem to me to have missed the point, so I'm glad to note that the buyers' reviews are generally favorable. If you will imagine a very Mexican image--two boa constrictors in a death struggle, each in the act of swallowing the other's tail--and now transfer that image to North American and Hispanic American cultures, you will have my vision of what Abish is getting at in his novel. I don't want to "tell you the story" but rather to challenge your intellectual curiosity. This is not a novel for casual reading on a flight to Cancun; Abish is aiming for the pallid immortality of writing great literature, and I think he achieves it.

Walter Abish (born December 24, 1931) is an American author of experimental novels and short stories.