Roberto Arlt

A man's need to repay money he stole from his employer leads him into the world of crime in 1920s Buenos Aires. A portrait of the city at a time when Argentina was thought to be destined for greatness.

"Reedición de los cuentos y de la 'nouvelle' originariamente publicados en 1941. Extremadamente útil por cuanto se trata de textos agotados, esta edición hecha por T. Fernández incluye una introducción así como una bibliografía"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

"Reedición de los textos que publicados en El Mundo entre 1928-1935 documentan la situación político-social del momento. Esta edición organiza su heterogeneidad agrupándolos según los temas tratados. Desfilan en ellos toda suerte de personajes, predominando los de la clase obrera y de la pequeña burguesía, sin eludir los tipos cómicos. Los precede una excelente introducción de Rita Gnutzmann"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

"A weird wonder of Argentine and modern literature, a crucial work for Julio Cortazar ("If there's one person in my country I feel close to, it's Roberto Arlt"), The Seven Madmen begins when its hapless and hopeless hero, Erdosain, is dismissed from his job as a bill collector for embezzlement. Then his wife leaves him and things only go downhill after that. Erdosain wanders the crowded, confusing streets of Buenos Aires, thronging with immigrants almost as displaced and alienated as he is, and finds himself among a group of conspirators who are in thrall to a man known simply as the Astrologer. The Astrologer has the cure for everything that ails civilization. Unemployment will be cured by mass enslavement. (Mountains will be hollowed out and turned into factories.) Mass enslavement will be funded by industrial-scale prostitution. That scheme will be kicked off with murder. "D'you know you look like Lenin?" Erdosain asks the Astrologer. Meanwhile Erdosain struggles to determine the physical location and dimensions of the soul, this thing that is causing him so much pain. Brutal, uncouth, caustic, and brilliantly colored, The Seven Madmen takes its bearings from Dostoyevsky while looking forward to Thomas Pynchon and Marvel Comics"--

Una antología de historias escritas por autores argentinos que toman como fuente de inspiración el cine y su mundo.

"Roberto Arlt (1900-1942), celebrated in Argentina for his tragicomic, punch-in-the-jaw writing during the 1920s and 1930s, was a forerunner of Latin American "boom" and "postboom" novelists such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. Mad Toy, acclaimed by many as Arlt's best novel, is set against the chaotic background of Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century. Set in the badlands of adolescence, where acts of theft and betrayal become metaphors for creativity, Mad Toy is equal parts pulp fiction, realism, detective story, expressionist drama, and creative memoir.". "An immigrant son of a German father and an Italian mothor, Arlt was a school dropout, poor and often hungry. In Mad Toy he brings his personal experience to bear on the lives of his characters. Published in 1926 as El Juguete Rabioso, the novel follows the adventures of Silvio Astier, a poverty-stricken and frustrated youth who is drawn to gangs and a life of petty crime. As Silvio struggles to bridge the gap between exuberant imagination and the sordid reality around him, he becomes fascinated with weapons, explosives, vandalism, and thievery, despite a desperate desire to rise above his origins. Flavored with a dash of romance, a hint of allegory, and a healthy dose of irony, the novel's language varies from the cultured idiom of the narrator to the dialects and street slang of the novel's many colorful characters."--BOOK JACKET.