Novel
The Cardboard House
La casa de cartón
Martín Adán · 1928
Synopsis
In Barranco, a seaside resort of Lima, in the twenties, a sixteen-year-old adolescent wanders with his friends, among them the enigmatic Ramón, whose figure recurs throughout the book. In thirty-nine short untitled passages, without plot or dialogue, he records his impressions, childhood, first loves, the awakening of the senses, and casts a distant and mocking eye on society, politics and religion, interspersed with the "Underwood Poems".
Context
The book grew around 1924 out of a school exercise set by his teacher Emilio Huidobro. Mariátegui read the manuscript in 1927 and published extracts in the review Amauta; the original, private edition appeared in July 1928, in at most three hundred copies, with a preface by Luis Alberto Sánchez and a colophon by Mariátegui. Success came only with the 1958 reissue. Its language, rich in archaisms, makes it demanding reading. Claude Couffon translated it into French in 1984, Katherine Silver into English in 1990.
Who it is for
For a short and singular book, written at sixteen, in which Lima and adolescence are told in shards of prose and poetry.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a milestone in the renewal of Peruvian literature under the influence of the avant-garde, it was adapted for the stage in 2012.