Roberto Arlt

Argentine novelist, storyteller, playwright, journalist and inventor who has been massively influential on Latin American literature, including the 1960s "Boom" generation of writers such as Gabriel García Márquez.

His first novel, El juguete rabioso (1926) ("Mad Toy"), was the semi-autobiographical story of Silvio, a dropout who goes through a series of adventures trying to be "somebody."

Arlt's second novel, the popular Los siete locos (The Seven Madmen) was rough, brutal, colloquial, and surreal, a complete break from the polite, middle-class literature more typical of Argentine literature. Los lanzallamas (The Flame-Throwers) was the sequel, and these two novels together are thought by many to be his greatest work.

During his lifetime, however, Arlt was best known for his Aguafuertes ("Etchings"), the result of his contributions as a columnist - between 1928 and 1942 - to the Buenos Aires daily El Mundo.

Roberto Arlt married twice and had two children including the noted writer Mirta Arlt. Worn out and exhausted after a lifetime of hardships, he died from a stroke on 26 July 1942 at age 42 in Buenos Aires.