“The Abandoned House” by Mario Levrero
Translated by Frances Riddle
On a downtown street lined with modern buildings, we find an old, abandoned house. The front garden contains a white fountain decorated with angels. It's separated from the sidewalk by a wrought-iron fence: a succession of rusted spears joined by two horizontal bars. The faded pink exterior is covered in dirt and greenish grime. The windows are hidden behind dark shutters. This unassuming house holds great interest for the few people, myself among them, who know its secrets and have fallen under its influence.
Read the full story here!
Mario Levrero was born in 1940 in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he lived until his death in 2004. He had various professions including bookseller, humorist, crossword puzzle maker, and creative writing teacher. Although he authored almost thirty novels and short story collections over a literary career that spanned four decades, he was long considered a cult writer and only late in life did he begin to receive critical acclaim. Mario Levrero is now recognized as one of the most important figures in Latin American literature, who has served as an influence to generations of writers.
Frances Riddle is an editor and translator based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her translations, interviews, articles, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in The Portable Museum, Catch and Release, Asymptote, Palabras Errantes, Berfrois, Ventana Latina, and The Argentina Independent, among others. Her book-length translations are forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press and New Directions.
Winner of the 2015 London Book Fair’s International Literary Translation Initiative Award and a member of The Guardian’s Books Network, Asymptote aims to unlock the literary treasures of the world. It gathers the best contemporary writing from around the globe and celebrates the practice of translation. It was founded in 2011 by Lee Yew Leong, who continues as Editor-in-Chief, helming a team of over eighty staffers from around the world. To date, the magazine has published literature and art from ninety-seven countries and seventy-three languages, including new material by Patrick Modiano, J.M. Coetzee, Yoshitomo Nara, Lydia Davis, Herta Müller, Anne Carson and Haruki Murakami.
This translation first appeared in the July 2015 issue of Asymptote. The original story was published in La maquina de pensar ed Gladys (The Gladys-Thinking Machine) by Mario Levrero; published in 2010 by Irrupciones Grupo Editor, Montevideo Uruguay. Thanks to the estate of Mario Levrero and to Claudia Bernaldo de Quirós for permission to publish this translation.
Want it on your Kindle? Click below!
