Levrero was a photographer, bookseller, comics scriptwriter, humourist, crossword author, and creator of brain games, and a novelist who gained cult status in Latin America. In 2000 he was awarded the Guggenheim grant that allowed him to complete work on The Luminous Novel, which was published posthumously. Annie McDermott’s translations include Mario Levrero’s Empty Words and The Luminous Novel for And Other Stories, as well as Loop by Brenda Lozano, Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (co-translation with Carolina Orloff) and City of Ulysses by Teolinda Gersão (co-translation with Jethro Soutar). She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, and is now based in London.

‘From domestic distractions to doubt and crippling insomnia, never has a book about the repetitious banality of the process of writing a novel – or, in fact avoiding writing a novel – been so compelling and accurately rendered. Mario Levrero turns the act of procrastination into a supreme art form.’ Benjamin Myers