Una novela enigma. Un desafio de ficcion, diversion y espejismo, donde nada es lo que parece y donde el simple hecho de seguir leyendo puede resultar arriesgado. La caverna de las ideas es una obra griega clasica que narra una intrigante historia: diversos asesinatos ocurridos en la epoca de Platon. Cuerpos mutilados de efebos son descubiertos en las calles de Atenas, crimenes inexplicables que no parecen seguir ningun orden logico. Heracles Pontor, el Descifrador de Enigmas, se encargara de resolverlos con ayuda de uno de los filosofos de la celebre Academia platonica, Diagoras de Medonte. Pero el propio texto de La caverna de las ideas que tienes ahora en tus manos m bien esconde secretos: sus traductores desaparecen o mueren, y el actual se enfrenta a un enigma milenario que desborda su capacidad de juicio y en el se imbricara tanto la novela como la percepcion de cada lector.

Una novela enigma. Un desafío de ficción, diversión y espejismo, donde nada es lo que parece y donde el simple hecho de seguir leyendo puede resultar arriesgado.

This has been on my radar since 2011 and in my possession since 2015. Ancient Greece and stories involving translators tick two pretty good boxes for me, so I was prepared for a good story. However, I found it extremely irritating. Part of this was on me—I’d actually somehow forgotten about the translator storyline and thought it was just a mystery set in ancient Greece, so it took me a little bit of getting used to. But I absolutely could not get behind the translator storyline, with the translator trying to solve a mystery that he thought was embedded in the text.

The translator came across as a pretentious twit. He threw fancy words around like nobody’s business, and said the word “eidesis” so many times that I was going to either make a drinking game out of it or reach into the book and slap him. And for some reason the whole ending each footnote with “(Translator’s Note)” or “(T’s N.)” annoyed the **** out of me. WHO ELSE WOULD BE WRITING THESE FOOTNOTES?! Also, translators don’t generally write this sort of nonsense in their footnotes. It was just too implausible.

And then because of this dude taking up all the airtime, I did not feel invested in Heracles Pontor’s story either. This book went straight to the giveaway pile. ( )

At best mediocre. I simply couldn't suspend my disbelief at the underlying conceit of the novel, and the prose and characterisation were too weak and ham-fisted to compensate for that. Also, Somoza appears to have a grasp of Plato's theories which I would find weak in a first year undergraduate—ironic in a book which seems designed as a showpiece for how clever the author is. ( )

One of those books I wanted to like, but didn't make it through (well, I speed-read passages here and there to get an idea of the plot).

Someone here named the (fictional) translator of the book as interruptor, and I concur with that. On top of that I got a used book, in which the former reader had underlined all the important words; so I was told everything that was important plot-wise twice, so the feeling of discovery, which I guess must be one of the interesting parts of reading this book, was totally lost on me.

Also the translator/interrupor of the book started out with a major translation of a work that he hadn't even (speed)read through? I would never do that. ( )