Mario Levrero was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1940 and died there in 2004. Levrero was a photographer, bookseller, comics scriptwriter, humourist, crossword author, and creator of brain games. He wrote twelve novels and several short story collections and it was not long before he gained cult status amongst readers in Uruguay and Argentina, despite keeping a low profile. He has inspired Latin American writers such as Rodolfo Fogwill, Cesar Aira and Alejandro Zambra. In 2000 he was awarded the Guggenheim grant that allowed him to complete work on The Luminous Novel, which was published posthumously.
"""Stories that play with space, an absurd space when looked at with logic. And that is exactly the challenge that Levrero sets the reader: to read from their imagination, from that place where anything is possible, where fears, phobias and obsessions have free rein."" --Tati Jurado, El libro durmiente Praise for the Author ""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."" --Juan Pablo Villalobos, Granta ""We are all his children."" --�lvaro Enrigue Praise for The Luminous Novel ""The diary may be a museum of unfinished stories, but a story, The Luminous Novel shows, doesn't need to be finished to have its own meanings -- the largest of which may be that the transcendental experience Levrero is after has been visible all along."" --Adam Thirlwell, New York Times Book Review ""An affecting and hilariously digressive account of the anxieties of the creative process."" --�ngel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times Books of the Year ""A novel upon which cults are founded."" --Dustin Illingworth, New Left Review ""It compels our attention. More than this: as it lurches on in its awkward, clumsy way, with all the grace of a circus bear negotiating a tightrope, it grips our imagination in ways we cannot readily pin down . . . an improbably enthralling reading experience."" --Times Literary Supplement ""A novel about being in tune with the details of life that are most freaky-deaky, most humdrum, most comical, and most enraging. [...] This is a lengthy book with no plot, and I read the whole thing despite how it conflicted with my economic interests (see intro [re reading slowly]). That's the endorsement, and I'm sticking to it."" --Vulture ""This is procrastination as high art. Levrero makes the quotidian seem extraordinary. You may not think you're interested in the purchase of a new armchair, but it's described here with such surprising humour and drama that its significance begins to feel cosmic . . . The Luminous Novel was originally published in Spanish in 2005, a year after the author's death. This knowledge of mortality makes his continual terror that time is slipping through his fingers yet more poignant. Every wasted moment in this book feels precious."" --Sam Jordison, The Guardian"