The Thinking-About-Gladys Machine

“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.” —Álvaro 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

“A masterwork ... Levrero’s big problem, consuming him throughout the book, is that he’s won a Guggenheim fellowship to write a novel that is overly ambitious to the point of being impossible. ... Levrero delights in not meeting his obligation to Guggenheim ... Fans of Perec, Coover, and other experimentalists will enjoy Levrero’s epic struggle not to write this book.” —Kirkus, starred review

“The Luminous Novel could qualify as a new instalment in the literature of boredom, except that it's too charmingly, haplessly funny to be boring.” —Lily Meyer, NPR

“An affecting and hilariously digressive account of the anxieties of the creative process.” —Ángel 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

“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