Acknowledgments  

Introduction   

A Note on the Translation  

Arlts Dedication to Ricardo Guiraldes  

1. The Band of Thieves  

2. Works and Days  

3. Mad Toy  

4. Judas Iscariot   

Appendix. The Neighborhood Poet  

Notes  

Works Cited  

Winner, Texas Institute of Letters Translation Award

“Seemingly plotless but still engaging, this wild, whirling novel of Buenos Aires, originally published in the 1920s, tracks the life and misadventures of a young man whose mind is constantly evolving. . . . Arlt whips up some memorable character portraits. . . . Poetically animated language keeps this novel fresh and surprising, making its belated appearance in the U.S. worthwhile.”—Publishers Weekly

“This is the first novel published by the neglected Argentinian postmodernist writer whose phantasmagoric The Seven Madmen rivals the masterpieces of Cortázar, García Marquez, and Onetti. It’s the story of Silvio Astier (told by himself in old age), a street thug inspired by ‘the thrilling literature of outlaws and bandits,’ and educated in crime by his Fagin-like mentor Rengo (a charmer of a villain if there ever was one). Mad Toy bears interesting resemblances as well to both Don Quixote and Luis Buñuel’s classic naturalist film Los Olvidados. In addition to the novel’s own considerable interest, Aynesworth’s illuminating remarks about Arlt’s vigorous ‘polyglot style’ shed further light on a richly entertaining and unquestionably important work.”—Kirkus Reviews

“In the 1920s Roberto Arlt mined this complex urban landscape to create dizzying novels which combine social realism, fantasy, the picaresque, and criminal fiction. Arlt is often seen as a progenitor of Magic Realism, but the recent translation of his first novel, Mad Toy (1926), affords the English-speaking world a chance to read the novel Arlt wrote to describe his evolution as an artist. . . . [H]is story is framed largely as a Darwinian struggle for existence, carried out as a series of cunning forages into the social tapestry of Buenos Aires in the 1920s.”—Mary Sarko, Rain Taxi

"Mad Toy is a linguistic menagerie that show cases everything from proper speech to foreign words, dialect, and underworld slang. The novel reflects the chaos and anarchy of the new social environment, a diverse urban jungle where the emergent cultural expression was shaped and defined by the immigrant experience. Aynesworth's translation, based on the original 1926 edition of the novel, preserves these variations in admirable fashion. In her introductory material she provides a well-written overview of Arlt and his literary world."—Melvin S. Arrington, Jr., South Eastern Latin Americanist

Winner, Texas Institute of Letters Translation Award

“Seemingly plotless but still engaging, this wild, whirling novel of Buenos Aires, originally published in the 1920s, tracks the life and misadventures of a young man whose mind is constantly evolving. . . . Arlt whips up some memorable character portraits. . . . Poetically animated language keeps this novel fresh and surprising, making its belated appearance in the U.S. worthwhile.”—Publishers Weekly

“This is the first novel published by the neglected Argentinian postmodernist writer whose phantasmagoric The Seven Madmen rivals the masterpieces of Cortázar, García Marquez, and Onetti. It’s the story of Silvio Astier (told by himself in old age), a street thug inspired by ‘the thrilling literature of outlaws and bandits,’ and educated in crime by his Fagin-like mentor Rengo (a charmer of a villain if there ever was one). Mad Toy bears interesting resemblances as well to both Don Quixote and Luis Buñuel’s classic naturalist film Los Olvidados. In addition to the novel’s own considerable interest, Aynesworth’s illuminating remarks about Arlt’s vigorous ‘polyglot style’ shed further light on a richly entertaining and unquestionably important work.”—Kirkus Reviews

“In the 1920s Roberto Arlt mined this complex urban landscape to create dizzying novels which combine social realism, fantasy, the picaresque, and criminal fiction. Arlt is often seen as a progenitor of Magic Realism, but the recent translation of his first novel, Mad Toy (1926), affords the English-speaking world a chance to read the novel Arlt wrote to describe his evolution as an artist. . . . [H]is story is framed largely as a Darwinian struggle for existence, carried out as a series of cunning forages into the social tapestry of Buenos Aires in the 1920s.”—Mary Sarko, Rain Taxi

"Mad Toy is a linguistic menagerie that show cases everything from proper speech to foreign words, dialect, and underworld slang. The novel reflects the chaos and anarchy of the new social environment, a diverse urban jungle where the emergent cultural expression was shaped and defined by the immigrant experience. Aynesworth's translation, based on the original 1926 edition of the novel, preserves these variations in admirable fashion. In her introductory material she provides a well-written overview of Arlt and his literary world."—Melvin S. Arrington, Jr., South Eastern Latin Americanist

“With a novel such as Mad Toy, brimming with fantasy and romance, yet pulling the rug out from under the protagonist—and the reader—at every turn, it seems clear that Arlt’s purpose is not just to tell a good story. Along the way, he also illustrates the uses of fantasy and humor. Fantasy, transforming the sordid into the beautiful, makes life seem sweeter; humor, exposing the illusions of fantasy, makes wisdom tolerable.”—from the Introduction

“Roberto Arlt is the greatest Argentine writer of the twentieth century.”—Ricardo Piglia, author of The Absent City and Artificial Respiration

“Arlt’s influence on figures like Borges, Cortazar, Onetti, and Piglia is substantial—and equally so are his literary reverberations today, when his grim, sordid view of life seems to speak louder than ever before.”—Ilan Stavans, editor of Mutual Impressions: Writers from the Americas Reading One Another

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