SOURCE: A review of The Iguana, in The Antioch Review, Vol. 46, No. 1, Winter, 1988, pp. 115-16.

In the review below, Bick comments favorably on The Iguana.

First published in Italian in the mid-sixties, Ortese's novel [The Iguana] is set on Ocano, a remote island off the Portuguese coast. Ocano is inhabited by a diverse and fantastic assortment of characters: Don Ilario Jimenes, a marquis given to sumptuous clothing and an enthusiasm for literature; his two rather simian brothers; and the eponymous Iguana, also known as Estrellita.

Bent on discovering lucrative Mediterranean real estate—or manuscripts that can be published for the "moral improvement of the public"—Carlo Ludovico Aleardo di Grees ("Daddo"), a Milanese count and architect, anchors off the coast of the island and soon resolves to rescue Don Ilario from his limited surroundings. In his combination of saintliness and ineptitude the Count resembles Dostoevsky's Prince Mishkin as...