In a house bigger than his memories, Carlitos wanders through corridors and rooms. He finds lost things he isn’t looking for, and fails to find those he is. One day, he discovers a door locked with a huge padlock.

From that moment on, his curiosity takes the form of a question:

What’s in the cellar? And so it begins to guide him through a world that grows ever stranger, where every answer opens up new questions. Through encounters with bizarre characters—a grandmother who lives inside a cloud of dust, a chatty insect, lying gardeners—he progresses on a journey whose rules bend as if in a dream.

In El sótano, Mario Levrero entertains and unsettles us in an adventure steeped in wonder, uncertainty and humour.

Fun and unsettling, it draws on the tradition of the nonsense found in Alice in Wonderland and offers a depth and richness of layers of meaning and paths to explore, providing a multifaceted, varied reading experience that never loses its appeal. Rosanna Peveroni, La Diaria

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