Mario Levrero: La novela luminosa (The Luminous Novel)

The latest addition to my website is Mario Levrero‘s La novela luminosa (The Luminous Novel). This is the story, in the form of a diary, of a novelist called Mario who is endeavouring to write a luminous novel, based on an image he saw many years ago. The novel is long – 544 pages – and during these many pages, he outlines what he does all the time which is pretty well everything, except write the luminous or indeed any novel. He finds numerous distractions – computer/Internet, friends, buying and reading books, dead pigeons, ants, the occasional ghost, health (mental and physical), unhealthy eating and sleeping habits, the State bureaucracy, and other issues. As he says This whole book is the testimony of a monumental failure. At times we find him exasperating, at others we might sympathise but I never found it boring.

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