LIKNELSEBOKEN DI P.O. ENQUIST: IN VIAGGIO LUNGO I CONFINI DELL’UOMO

Liknelseboken (2013, The Parable Book) is the latest novel by one of the greatest contemporary Swedish writers, Per Olav Enquist (1934), who devotes most of his wide literary production to the exploration of the margins of humanity. It is often from these very margins that his main characters emerge: madmen, poets, monsters, ghosts, animals, and himself. This paper interprets Liknelseboken itself as a journey along the borders of the human-other; it shows how the narrative structure contributes to the outlining of a crumbling "post-human" subject that needs to be put back together; and eventually offers a critical review of the animal poetics in the novel, leading to the establishment of a connection between animality and a new sacred form of verbal language.