A comedic and poetic tell about a man back from the dead to haunt humans. The posthumous novel of Raoul Ruiz, achieved shortly before his own death.
The Wit of the Staircase is a hymn to the imaginary. Raoul Ruiz made the final touches a few days before his death. Taking a ghost as alter-ego, this mischievous fantasy liberates the reader, and disarms with its unusual poetry. This book follows his other written works published with Dis Voir (
In Pursuit of Treasure Island,
The Book of Disappearances and his two
Poetics of Cinema volumes).
“You are going to invent a life, a whole life. I was spoilt for choice... I could recount my life as the Emperor of China. Or a Roman legionnaire, a Catalan bandit, goodness knows what! I re-invented my own life, with a slight discrepancy. I couldn't possibly know I was going to live this life... for real! That I would have to suffer the death I recounted.”
Raoul Ruiz
Raoul Ruiz (1941–2011) was an experimental Chilean
filmmaker, writer, teacher and theater director. A key figure of the New Latin American Cinema, politically engaged, he was forced to exile after Pinochet's coup d'etat in 1973. His work features over 100 films such as
Tres tristes tigres (1968),
Palomita blanca (1973),
Dark at Noon (1992) starring John Hurt,
Three Lives and Only One Death (1996) starring Marcello Mastroianni,
Genealogies of a Crime (1997) starring Catherine Deneuve,
Time Regained (1999) and
Klimt (2006) starring John Malkovich, and
Mysteries of Lisbon (2010).
