The longest Argentine novel ever written, Los Sorias survived as a single manuscript for a decade before it was finally published — and became one of the most legendary books in local literature. 

Now, the 1300-page work by cult author Alberto Laiseca will have an English translation. Dallas-based Deep Vellum publisher announced the acquisition of Los Sorias, to be translated by Max Lawton and scheduled for publication in the spring of 2029.

Written over ten years while its author worked as a janitor, Los Sorias takes readers into an alternate universe in which a new world war is playing out among three superpowers: Soria, Technocracy, and the U.S.S.R. 

While describing in excruciating detail the near-constant atrocities committed on all sides, Laiseca deploys a sharp satire about the officials and intellectuals who work to disguise the crimes committed by the powerful. 

Characters marooning in these three states include philosophizing vagabonds, magicians, zombies, robots, and a host of demonic creatures spawned by a force of absolute evil dubbed Anti-Being.

“My work is delirious realism,” Laiseca once stated in an interview. “I’m very much a realist, too, but not in the way Émile Zola or the Soviets might have been. What I want to do with the distortions of delirium is precisely to highlight parts of reality that are rarely seen. That’s what realism is for.”

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© Buenos Aires Herald