Spanish · Advanced
Read Los siete locos in Spanishwith every sentence explained
English title: The Seven Madmen
Roberto Arlt · 1929
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About the book
Los siete locos by Roberto Arlt was first published in 1929. In Passage you read the full text in the original Spanish, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction, mystery and crime and thriller and suspense. It runs to about 79,800 words.
A man caught stealing six hundred pesos. A secret society that promises to remake the world.
Remo Erdosain, a humble bill collector for a sugar company in Buenos Aires, is exposed as an embezzler and given a single day to return the money. That same day his wife, Elsa, walks out on him. Crushed by anguish and humiliation, Erdosain drifts through the city looking for a way out of his own life.
He finds it in a house in Temperley, home of the Astrologer, a strange visionary who is building a revolutionary secret society to be funded by a chain of brothels. Around him gathers a gallery of unforgettable misfits: the Melancholy Pimp, a gold prospector, a pharmacist who believes he is a prophet. And in Erdosain's tormented mind an idea begins to grow: to be someone, he may have to commit a crime.
Roberto Arlt's The Seven Madmen (1929) is a cornerstone of modern Argentine fiction, a feverish, darkly comic novel about despair, power and the lure of fanaticism.
- Author
- Roberto Arlt
- First published
- 1929
- Language
- Spanish
- Level
- Advanced
- Genre
- Historical Fiction, Mystery and Crime, Thriller and Suspense
- Length
- About 79,800 words
How it opens
Al abrir la puerta de la gerencia, encristalada de vidrios japoneses, Erdosain quiso retroceder; comprendió que estaba perdido, pero ya era tarde.
Lo esperaban el director, un hombre de baja estatura, morrudo, con cabeza de jabalí, pelo gris cortado a «lo Humberto I», y una mirada implacable filtrándose por sus pupilas grises como las de un pez: Gualdi, el contador, pequeño, flaco, meloso, de ojos escrutadores, y el subgerente, hijo del hombre de cabeza de jabalí, un guapo mozo de treinta años, con el cabello totalmente blanco, cínico en su aspecto, la voz áspera y mirada dura como la de su progenitor.
Reading Los siete locos in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in Spanish. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate Spanish book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
