Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes

According to Johnny Depp, “If Hubert Selby Jr., Charles Bukowski, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Neil Cassady, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the Marquis de Sade, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Edward Teach, Charley Parker, Iggy Pop, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, R. Crumb, Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, Dashiell Hammett, E.M. Cioran and all of the Three Stooges had all been involved in some greasy, shameful, evil whorehouse orgy, Jonathan Shaw would surely be its diabolical, reprobate spawn.”

This first novel by Shaw, the internationally acclaimed tattoo artist and son of jazz legend Artie Shaw, unfolds in the wild backwaters of Rio de Janeiro and New York, where narrator Cigano attempts in vain to curb the unhinged habits of his lover Narcisa. As they navigate the chaos of her spiraling life of drugs, burglaries and violent mood swings, Cigano records a love affair doomed by sociopathy.

Introduction by Lydia Lunch.