ARGONAUT BOOKS

In 'Letters from a Seducer', Hilst describes the everyday life of Karl, a wealthy, erudite, and amoral man who seeks an answer to his incomprehension of life through sex. Karl writes and sends twenty provocative letters to Cordelia, his chaste sister. The letters' text becomes intertwined with the life of the poet Stamatius, who finds Karl's letters in the trash, as Hilst constructs an ingenious mirror play between the two that casts strange light on questions of amorality, sexuality and the spirit.