The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, published in the United States as The War of Dreams, is a 1972 novel by Angela Carter. This picaresque novel is heavily influenced by surrealism, Romanticism, critical theory, and other branches of Continental philosophy. Its style is an amalgam of magical realism and postmodern pastiche. The novel has been called a theoretical fiction, as it clearly engages in some of the theoretical issues of its time, notably feminism, mass media and the counterculture. The novel features Desiderio, a government minister in a city which is currently under attack by Doctor Hoffman's reality-distorting machines, in an unspecified Latin American country. Desiderio embarks on a journey to find Hoffman's former physics teacher, eventually bringing him to Hoffman's castle.