1929
The Seven Madmen
Roberto Arlt · 1900–1942 · Argentina
Originally Los siete locos (Spanish)
Why it matters
An embezzling Buenos Aires clerk falls in with a lunatic 'Astrologer' plotting to fund a fascist revolution through a syndicate of brothels and a poison-gas patent. A feverish, paranoid vision of the modern city as a half-built machine about to seize.
At a glance
psychological novelpolitical novel
Difficulty 7/10medium pace256 pagesDeliberately clumsy, breathless prose and a cast of conspirators and cranks resist a clean throughline.
Deep dive
A broke, embezzling clerk falls in with a self-styled revolutionary prophet — and the novel that results is less interested in whether the conspiracy is real than in what kind of city produces men desperate enough to believe in it.
