El asno de oro

Apuleius's Golden Ass, a hilarious and bawdy story that tells the story of a young man who ventures into magic and becomes a donkey, is a classic of Latin literature that the philosopher Peter Singer rescues from oblivion to show us the life of a humble beast of burden. Mixing doses of humor, sex and supernatural powers, this entertaining novel reveals not only the misadventures of the protagonist, the curious and irrepressible Lucio, but also the cruel reality in which his experiences as a donkey are framed. This illustrated edition, in which Singer has suppressed the numerous digressions of the Latin text to offer us the central core of the story -the adventures of a man transformed into an animal-, is complemented by two appendices on the literary and cultural context in which it was produced. The golden ass and the ethical meaning of this story today, reflections that show the relevance of this masterpiece regarding how we think about and treat animals.