The Novices of Lerna

Author: Bonomini, Angel

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 31 October 2024 by Peninsula Press Ltd in the United Kingdom.

When unambitious scholar Ramon Beltra receives a mysterious invitation to a lucrative six-month fellowship at the University of Lerna in Switzerland, he reluctantly complies with the unusual qualifying paperwork requiring several pages of detailed measurements and photographs of his entire body. Beltra soon finds himself in the deserted university town of Lerna, together with twenty-three other 'novices' subject to the same undisclosed project – all of them doppelgangers of Beltra himself. At first, Beltra is the only one to bristle at the school's dizzying array of rules and regulations, but this all changes with the onset of an uncontrollable epidemic, and the fellows begin dying off one by one...

The Novices of Lerna is a meditation on identity, surveillance, and isolation that remains eerily relevant. Shot through with wry humour and tender absurdity, this novella offers a perfect introduction to Ángel Bonomini's incomparable body of work.