Trapeze (The Catch Trap)

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Trapez (OT: The Catch Trap ) is the title of a novel by the American writer Marion Zimmer Bradley from 1979.

Trapez tells the story of an Italian-American family of trapeze artists, the Flying Santellis , whose talented aviator Mario practices the triple somersault , called somersault mortale (fatal somersault). In the 1940s and 1950s this act was a great sensation, which cost many artists their lives, or at least their health, and which few people around the world believed themselves capable of.

In addition to describing circus life and working on this life-threatening feat, the novel is a homoerotic love story, as the aviator Mario Santelli and his younger colleague Tommy Zane, who is employed by the family as a young artist, fall in love. At that time, homosexual contact was still a criminal offense in the US and many other countries. In addition, Tommy is so young at the beginning of the relationship that it was initially an ephebophile relationship.

The novel accompanies the Santellis, especially the lovers Mario and Tommy, over a period of ten years (1944–1953). It is a book about the circus , especially on the flying trapeze , while also a love story and a report on the difficulties and dangers that homosexual men and boys before the time of a public possible coming-outs had to exist.

The pronounced realism of the novel makes it a special case in the otherwise fantasy -oriented literary production of Marion Zimmer Bradley.

First editions