Twelve Fingers: Biography of an Anarchist.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Books: mishaps, myths, and antimodernism

Twelve Fingers: Biography of an Anarchist, by Jo Soares. Trans., Clifford E. Landers. New York: Pantheon, 2001.

Twelve Fingers, by Brazilian novelist J5 Soares, is a side-splitter from beginning to end. Dimitri Borja Korozec, the would-be hero, was born in Bosnia in 1897 of a beautiful Brazilian mulatto circus contortionist and a radical Serbian linotypist. With his father's blessing, Dimo trains as a terrorist with Union or Death, an organization struggling for a unified Serbia. A smart kid with a knack for languages and weaponry, Dimo possesses two flaws: He has two index fingers on each hand, and he's an incredible klutz.

His first assignment is to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand in Saravejo, but at the key moment he gets both index fingers caught in the gun's trigger guard, and the honor of starting World War I goes to his arch rival, Gavrilo Princip. His comrades arrange for his escape to Paris on the Orient Express, where he almost seduces the famous double agent Mata Hari.

Once in Paris, Dimo plots the assassination of the pacifist Jean Jaures, editor of L'Humanite, for his opposition to the approaching war. Disguised as a waiter at Jaures's favorite restaurant, Dimo prepares a poisoned dessert for his victim. In the meantime, the chief of police, aware that plots abound against Jaures, orders Inspector Javert (grandson of the famous Javert who stalked Jean Valjean in Les Miserables) to protect him. Javert follows Jaures into the restaurant and, sniffing something amiss when Dimo's false mustache and goatee start to melt off, prepares to tackle the waiter as he serves the deadly bombe. But suddenly, Raoul Villain, an Alsatian nationalist, opens fire on Jaures and kills him. Dimo nearly dies from the fumes of the naphthalene he used in the lethal dessert, but makes it to the hospital, where Marie Curie saves him. In a mix-up, the hospital personnel anesthetize him and remove his kidney.

Dimo's mishaps continue after the onset of the war. On his way to the Battle of the Marne, he gets lost in Melun, where the soldiers tangle uproariously over which French town produces the best brie. Back in Paris, at the Brasserie Lipp, where the likes of Picasso, Cocteau, and Modigliani debate trends in art, he meets the son of the great Brazilian abolitionist Jose do Patrocinio. Realizing he will never be a war hero and learning that his parents have died of typhus, our almost-hero takes Patrocinio's advice and sails for his mother's native land...