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  • Published: 3 February 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141399652
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman



One of two strange and compelling Angela Carter novels, new to Penguin Modern Classics

Desiderio, an employee of the city under a bizarre reality attack from Doctor Hoffman's mysterious machines, has fallen in love with Albertina, the Doctor's daughter. But Albertina, a beautiful woman made of glass, seems only to appear to him in his dreams. Meeting on his adventures a host of cannibals, centaurs and acrobats, Desiderio must battle against unreality and the warping of time and space to be with her, as the Doctor reduces Desiderio's city to a chaotic state of emergency - one ridden with madness, crime and sexual excess.

A satirical tale of magic and sex, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is a dazzling quest for truth, love and identity.

  • Published: 3 February 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141399652
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

About the author

Angela Carter

Angela Carter was born in 1940. She lived in Japan, the United States and Australia. Her first novel, Shadow Dance, was published in 1965. Her next book, The Magic Toyshop, won the John Llewllyn Rhys Prize and the next, Several Perceptions, the Somerset Maugham Award. She died in February 1992.

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Praise for The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

'One of the most original, radical and stylish fiction writers of the twentieth century'

Independent

She belonged at the centre of the literature of her time

Salman Rushdie, New York Times