Mario Levrero

[1][4] He stopped attending school at age 14 due to a heart murmur and instead spent his time in bed, reading and listening to tango music.

In his twenties, he ran a secondhand bookshop with a friend and was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Uruguay's youth wing.

Published in 1970, the novel became part of what he described as an "involuntary trilogy" along with París (Paris) (1980) and El lugar (The Place) (1982).

[4] Levrero received a Guggenheim Grant in 2000 to finish work on a project he had begun in 1984 that he called La novela luminosa (The Luminous Novel).

[1] Levrero's work has inspired Latin American writers such as Rodolfo Fogwill, César Aira and Alejandro Zambra.