The Mad Toy

Description

First published in 1920, The Mad Toy is set in Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century. Feeling the alienation of youth, Silvio Astier's gang tours neighbourhoods, inflicting waves of petty crime, stealing from homes and shops until the police are forced to intervene. Drifting then from one career and subsequent crime to another, Silvio's main difficulty is his own intelligence, with which he grapples. Writing in the language of the streets and basing his writings in part on his own experience, with his characters wandering in a modern world, Arlt creates a book that combines realism, humour and anger with detective story. Trailblazing for Boom writers who were to follow him such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende, Roberto Arlt is rated as one of the greatest Argentinean writers. Although astronomically famous in South America, Roberto Arlt's name is still relatively unknown in Anglophone circles, but the rising wave of appreciation of South American literature is bringing him to the fore.

Roberto Arlt (1900-1942) is widely considered to be one of the founders of the modern Argentine novel and has been massively influential on Latin American literature, including the 1960s Boom generation of writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. Colm Toibin is an award-winning writer and journalist whose books include Brooklyn, The Master, and The Testament of Mary.

'Wild, whirling novel of Buenos Aires - Poetically animated language keeps this novel fresh and surprising' Publishers Weekly 'Popular and incisive, it described the changing landscape and subjectivity of the time. Still influences writers' Clarin (Argentina's largest newspaper) 'If great means anything at all, then Arlt is surely a great writer' Martin Seymour-Smith