The Cardiff Team: Ten Stories

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0811213358, Hardcover)

Guy Davenport is one of America's foremost classical scholars, and the author of witty, erudite, sometimes breathtaking essays on literature, art, and culture. He is also a writer of dense, homoerotic short fiction, often packed with his eclectic learning. Davenport's lyrical prose, his imaginative translations of classical and modern poetry, and his vast store of knowledge are on display in this collection of ten stories that range from Kafka's visit to a nude spa to a tour of modern-day Paris. The mix of high classicism and unabashed homosexuality makes for a rich brew, certainly not for everyone. But Davenport is one of those writers who is incapable of writing an uninteresting sentence, much less a dull story.