A modernist urban novel in the tradition of James Joyce, Adam Buenosayres is a tour-de-force that does for Buenos Aires what Carlos Fuentes did for Mexico City or Jose Lezama Lima did for Havana - chronicles a city teeming with life in all its clever and crass, rude and intelligent forms. Employing a range of literary styles and a variety of voices, Leopoldo Marechal parodies and celebrates Argentina's most brilliant literary and artistic generation, the martinfierristas of the 1920s, among them Jorge Luis Borges. First published in 1948 during the polarizing reign of Juan Peron, the novel was hailed by Julio Cortazar as an extraordinary event in twentieth-century Argentine literature. Set over the course of three break-neck days, Adam Buenosayres follows the protagonist through an apparent metaphysical awakening, a battle for his soul fought by angels and demons, and a descent through a place resembling a comic version of Dante's hell. Presenting both a breathtaking translation and thorough explanatory notes, Norman Cheadle captures the limitless language of Marechal's original and guides the reader along an unmatched journey through the culture of Buenos Aires. This first-ever English translation brings to light Marechal's masterwork with an introduction outlining the novel's importance in various contexts - Argentine, Latin American, and world literature - and with notes illuminating its literary, cultural, and historical references. A salient feature of the Argentine canon, Adam Buenosayres is both a path-breaking novel and a key text for understanding Argentina's cultural and political history.

About the Author
Leopoldo Marechal (1900-1970) began his literary career as a poet in the avant-garde scene of Buenos Aires in the 1920s and exerted a fundamental influence on Argentine poetry and fiction. He wrote more than twenty books. Norman Cheadle is associate professor of Hispanic studies at Laurentian University.

Reviews
"Adam Buenosayres is one of the most outstanding anomalies of Argentinian literature and Norman Cheadle's translation is excellent and faithful. It should be in any library with an important Latin American collection." David William Foster, School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University "Written between 1931 and 1948, Adam Buenosayres, newly reissued, is closest to Joyce's Ulysses in its singularity, its excessiveness, and impressive literary references, to wit, Homer, Virgil, and Cervantes. Hailed in 1949 by the young Cortazar whose or "Adam Buenosayres is one of the final classics of international modernism to reach an English-speaking audience, which will be extremely well-served by Norman Cheadle and Sheila Ethier's superlatively fluent, copiously annotated translation." Richard Can



Book Information
ISBN 9780773543096
Author Leopoldo Marechal
Format Paperback
Page Count 744
Imprint McGill-Queen's University Press
Publisher McGill-Queen's University Press