A mysterious and deadly plague suddenly appears among the inhabitants of an unnamed city. Shunned by family and friends, some of the afflicted have nowhere to finish out their days until a lone hair stylist decides to convert his "Salon to the Stars" into a refuge for the dying. A connoisseur of exotic fish whose many aquariums adorn the salon, he creates a kind of medieval hospice. Time passes, his "guests" continue to arrive and die, and his isolation becomes more and more complete. All the while, the multicolored fish bear silent witness to his almost saintly dedication. Without medicines, pity or moralizing, he dispenses care until he meets his own end, in this dream-like parable from one of Mexico's cutting-edge literary stars.
An author known for his penchant for the surreal, the strange, and the freakish, Mexican author Mario Bellatin's BEAUTY SALON is a bleak and disturbing tale of a plague-stricken city where a famous hair stylist turns his salon into a hospice for the dying. The poetic, at times nightmarish, novella is laced with dreamlike scenes of intense beauty and deep mysterious humanity.
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Themes, Juvenile Fiction, Fiction + Literature Genres
- Subgenre: General, Stages of Life, Literary, Society + Social Issues, Health + Daily Living / General, Types of Characters, Medicine + Health, Literary Genres + Types of Novels, Disasters
- Publisher: City Lights Books
- Pages: 63
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: July 1, 2009
- Date Published: July 1, 2009
- Author: Mario Bellatin, Bellatin