Mario Levrero

Uruguay | 1940-2004

Jorge Mario Varlotta Levrero, born in Montevideo in 1940 and died there in 2004. Levrero was a photographer, bookseller, comics script writer, humorist, crossword author, creator of brain games. In his later years, he directed a literary workshop.

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Published by

Spanish (Spain, Uruguay, Argentina) Alfaguara, Literatura Random House, Caballo de Troya, Libros del Zorro Rojo, Criatura Editora, Pequeño Editor / Colombia Laguna Libros / Costa Rica Lanzallamas / English And Other Stories (UK), Coffee House Press (USA), Elsewhere Editions (USA) / French Éditions De L’arbre, Notabilia, Éditions Noir sur Blanc / Italian La Nouva Frontiera, Editoriale Jaca Books, Piedimosca Edizioni / Chinese Hunan Literature & Art Publishing House / Japanese Editions Kazeno Bara-Suiseisha / Portuguese Rocco Editora, Companhia Das Letras, FTD (Brazil) / Hebrew Carmel, Tesha Neshamot / Danish Skjødt Forlag / Dutch Mmit Publishing / Turkish Paloma Medya Hiz

A cult writer, later in life he was seen as a master and point of reference for many of the best writers in Latin America.

Levrero’s writing, structured around humour and unease, takes the form of a clean prose based on the psychological that has been characterized as “introspective realism”.

He is the author of an extensive body of literary work which includes journalistic writing (some of the best articles are to be found in Irrupciones I and Irrupciones II), short stories, novels and essays.

Levrero hated interviews and prologues. He was interested in self-hypnosis, believed in telepathic phenomena, read about Zen, was addicted to computers, loved science, hated being addressed in the “usted” form, could not abide solemnity in general, read detective novels even at breakfast. He was a lover of cinema.

The man who never died.

Levrero is Kafka’s “everyday” flip side, a shadow of Camus with a comical take. El País

Style and imagination like Levrero’s are rare in Spanish-language literature. Antonio Muñoz Molina

Mario Levrero is a genius. Enrique Fogwil

Levrero is an author who challenges the canonical idea of Latin American literature. If you really want to complete the puzzle of our tradition, you must read him. Granta Magazine

Mario Levrero is the great discovery of the century for Latin American literature. Revista Eñe, diario Clarín

We are all his children. Álvaro Enrique

It could be argued that Levrero’s name stands today, together with Fogwill’s and Roberto Bolaño’s, as a sort of involuntary Latin American canon from the early twentieth century. Maximiliano Tomas

A superb writer. One of the great Latin American authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, along with Roberto Bolaño. Elena Hevia, El Periódico

Levrero, an extraordinary, authentic and rare writer. La opinión de Málaga