"He is so eclectic and heretical, that he reconciles us all in a theosophically cosmic and monistic synthesis" -José Carlos Mariátegui. Originally published in Perú in 1928 to great acclaim, The Cardboard House was clearly destined to become a classic. Written during Martín Adán's prodigious adolescence in Barranco -a peaceful sea resort in the coast of Lima-, The Cardboard House is a novel of visionary excursion through the crevices of sensation and memory, moving in a fluid poetic exploration that traverses swiftly from the social to the cosmic. Martín Adán's experimental style has been admired and celebrated by authors as diverse as Mario Vargas Llosa, Allen Ginsberg and Roberto Bolaño; and The Cardboard House stands out in history as a major statement of the avant-garde movements in Latin America. This new English translation strives to preserve the experimental style of The Cardboard House in its original Spanish language, and intends to reestablish its importance as one of the crucial texts of the Latin American literary avant-garde.

The Cardboard House by Martín Adán: A new translation by José Garay Boszeta

Literature & Fiction

Adán, Martín

United States

Dulzorada

A sweeping, kaleidoscopic, and passionate novel that presents a stunning series of flashes ― scenes, moods, dreams, and weather― as the narrator wanders through Lima.
Published in 1928 to great acclaim when its author was just twenty years old, The Cardboard House is sweeping, kaleidoscopic, and passionate. The novel presents a stunning series of flashes ― scenes, moods, dreams, and weather― as the narrator wanders through Barranco (then an exclusive seaside resort outside Lima). In one beautiful, radical passage after another, he skips from reveries of first loves, South Pole explorations, and ocean tides, to precise and unashamed notations of class and of race: an Indian woman “with her hard,shiny, damp head of hair―a mud carving,” to a gringo gobbling “synthetic milk,canned meat, hard liquor.”
Adán’s own aristocratic family was in financial freefall at the time, and, as the translator notes, The Cardboard House is as “subversive now as when it was written: Adán’s uncompromising poetic vision and the trueness and poetry of his voice constitute a heroic act against cultural colonialism.”

The Cardboard House

New Directions

The narrator reflects on his own adolescence, the emergence of Peru from its colonial past, and the European travelers in the resort town of Barranco

The Cardboard House (A Palabra Sur Book)

Graywolf Pr

Written in lyrical prose, this short, avant-garde Peruvian novel narrates the experiences of an adolescent during a summer at a resort. With a tone between decadent and dreamlike, this work—almost devoid of narrative plot—is a master of irony and consists of observations that the adolescent makes during his daily walk and descriptions of the houses, streets, and residents of the resort. Escrita en prosa lírica, esta breve, vanguardista novela peruana narra las experiencias de un adolescente durante un verano en un balneario. Con un tono entre decadentista y onírico, esta obra—casi carente de trama narrativa—es una maestra de ironía y consiste en las observaciones del adolescente durante sus paseos diarios y las descripciones de las casas, las calles y los habitantes del balneario.

La casa de cartón (Spanish Edition)

Ediciones Barataria

CASA DE CARTON, LA (Spanish Edition)

MANSALVA