Paper House (Book)

Paper House is a short narrative work written by Carlos María Domínguez in 2002. First published in Argentina, this text explores how a passion for books can transform into an obsessive fixation at an individual level.

Subject

Paper House is a brief narrative that traces the personal and obsessive relationship with books. Within its fictional structure, it incorporates real books and authors to create an intrinsically literary narrative layer. The text unfolds around events that follow the death of Bluma Lennon, a colleague of the main character, who holds a teaching position at the University of Cambridge. The story progresses through a chain of events triggered by the acquisition of a single book.

The work examines the effects of acts such as reading, ownership, and book collecting on the individual, as well as their potentially destructive dimensions. The structure can be described as a kind of “book about books”, in which the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred, and intertextual references are woven throughout the narrative.

Characters

• Bluma Lennon: An academic at the University of Cambridge; events begin after her death.
• The Narrator: Nameless; colleague of Bluma and the person investigating her death.
• Carlos Brauer: A former literature enthusiast whose obsessive devotion to books the narrator traces.

Themes and Structural Features

The main themes highlighted in the work include book obsession, identity, belonging, memory, death, and the personal bond formed with texts. The narrative has a concise and intense structure. Moving within a fictional plot, the storytelling is supported by documentary-style text fragments, exhibiting postmodern characteristics.