Frieze

Overview

This poetic narrative discusses the creative life of a 9th century Indian stonecarver who is drafted at an early age to spend his entire life working on the thousands of statues that fill the niches of an Indonesian temple. Exploring the muse–artist relationship as few works of fiction have done, this novel is an intensely political work—a parable that pits the blind cruelty of a feudal ruler against the creative expression of a single slave.

Reviews

“A singular, absorbing book.”  —The New Yorker

“As delicately phrased as a prose poem. . . . A parable that opposes the pride and power of the state to the slow resistance of human life.”  —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Cecile Pineda is a writer of the utmost artistic integrity.”  —J. M. Coetzee, author, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Author Biography

Cecile Pineda is the author of several novels, including Face, Fishlight: A Dream of Childhood, and Love Queen of the Amazon. Her novel Face was nominated for the American Book Award for first fiction. She lives in Oakland, California.