Product details
- ISBN 9781529951523
- Weight: 222g
- Dimensions: 139 x 206mm
- Publication Date: 02 Apr 2026
- Publisher: Vintage Publishing
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Welcome to the gutters of 1970s Paris – and the transgressive, darkly comic world of City of Rats.
When pet rat Gouri finds himself locked out of his owner’s apartment, he has no choice but to strike out alone onto the pavements of Paris. But what begins as a strange and marvellous bedtime story - Gouri and his new friend Raka selling flour-coated worms to pigeons for spare change - soon spirals into an exhilarating whirlwind of murder, sex, unionised hamsters, courtroom drama, and, finally, Armageddon.
Told through a series of letters from Gouri to Argentinian playwright Copi, City of Rats channels Copi’s lifelong fascination with society’s outcasts - queer people, immigrants, the homeless - into a fiercely imaginative, unflinchingly provocative tale of a world hurtling into madness.
'The greatest miniaturist of our age… Copi was a man of the Baroque, a Shakespeare, magically reincarnated in gay Paris' Cesar Aira
'Decadent, poised, unpredictable, violent, galling, and marvellous' Charlie Hebdo
TRANSLATED BY KIT SCHLUTER; WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY CESAR AIRA
Copi (Author)
Born in Buenos Aires in 1939, Raúl Damonte Botana derived his sobriquet COPI from a nickname his grandmother gave him, “copita de nieve,” or “little snowflake.” At 17, he went into exile in Haiti, Uruguay, and New York before finally settling in Paris, where he was a cartoonist, performer, playwright, and novelist. Copi co-founded the Panic movement with Alejandro Jodorowski and wrote a nationally syndicated comic strip. He died of an AIDS-related illness in 1987.
Kit Schluter (Translator)
Kit Schluter is the author of Cartoons and has recently translated books from the French and Spanish by Copi, bruno darío, Rafael Bernal, Mario Levrero, Marcel Schwob, Olivia Tapiero, and Enrique Vila-Matas. He lives in Mexico City.
