The Guardian of Amsterdam Street

by Sergio Schmucler, Jessie Mendez Sayer (Translator)

Overview

Roma meets A Gentleman in Moscow in this vivid portrait of the twentieth century, witnessed by one boy from his self-imposed refuge in Mexico City.

Galo has not left his home on Amsterdam Street, not since the day in 1938 when a shocking act of violence split his family apart. His hermitage is made easier by the peculiar design of the street. It is shaped like an ellipse — if you walk it, you will find yourself returning to the same place again and again.

Playing host to Jewish refugees, Spanish exiles, and Latin American revolutionaries, his home becomes the school at which Galo learns about a world he never sees, and the ideals and terrors that shape history. He begins to realize that Amsterdam Street, the site of endless returns, may be the true centre of the world. Appointing himself the street’s guardian, Galo witnesses the decades pass, knowing that everyone who walks away must one day come back.

A novel of rare humanity and grace, The Guardian of Amsterdam Street is a stunning portrait of a neighbourhood where the whole of the twentieth century comes alive and a moving inquiry into how we shape the world, and how it transforms us in turn.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487008284
Publisher:	House of Anansi Press
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

SERGIO SCHMUCLER (1959–2019) was born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1959 and went into exile in Mexico at the age of seventeen, where he studied social anthropology and screenwriting. His other novels include La cabeza de Mariano Rosas and Detrás del vidrio. In 2001 he received the Ariel Award from the Mexican Academy of Film for the screenplay of Crónica de un Desayuno. Sergio Schmucler was also a tireless fighter for human rights.

JESSIE MENDEZ SAYER is a literary translator and editor currently based in Mexico City. She studied History and Spanish at the University of Edinburgh. She cut her teeth in the publishing world at Editorial Anagrama in Barcelona before returning to London to work as a literary scout, with a particular focus on contemporary Spanish and Latin American literature. She moved to Mexico City in 2017, where she works as a translator. Her literary translations include books by authors such as Guillermo Arriaga, Alonso Cueto, and Alberto Barrera-Tyzka.

What People are Saying About This

Steven Heighton

In Jessie Mendez Sayer’s superb translation, The Guardian of Amsterdam Street introduces English-language readers to an important and deeply humane writer. Though Sergio Schmucler’s short novel elapses within just a few blocks in Mexico City — and then within a few rooms — its scope is large, encompassing history, exile, justice, fate, and love, while featuring seamless cameos by major historical figures. Schmucler’s vision, or revision, of a certain Argentinian revolutionary is especially striking and memorable.

Will Aitken

This brief, brilliant novel is no more straightforward than the Mexico City street it’s named for. If you’ve ever wandered through the La Condesa neighbourhood, you’ve likely crossed Amsterdam Street at least several times without meaning to, for it’s an ellipse rather than a straight line — you seem to keep meeting it every few blocks. In The Guardian of Amsterdam Street, by turns surreal, satirical, allegorical, and deeply engaging, a small boy tries to leave home, but each time he does he ends up where he began. As the novel proceeds with the wonderful illogic of a melancholy fairytale, Amsterdam Street becomes a clock, a history of Mexico, the world, and finally an infinity symbol. We lose ourselves, thoroughly, delightfully, as we learn the elliptical and eventually vertiginous joys and sorrows of a street without end.

From the Publisher

PRAISE FOR SERGIO SCHMUCLER AND THE GUARDIAN OF AMSTERDAM STREET:

“A deeply human book . . . Sergio Schmucler achieves a paradox of rare beauty: writing a book about exile that tells the story of someone who has decided not to leave his home.” — La Voz

“Humour, longing, love, sadness . . . A study of mankind that Schmucler reveals to the reader in The Guardian of Amsterdam Street.” — Arte y Cultura

Maria Reva

A timely work about watching the forces of history roil forth from the confines of one’s own home. Sergio Schmucler deftly explores the illusion of control we cultivate in childhood and cling onto through adulthood, and offers the possibility of letting go of it at last. A poignant novel full of grace.

Editorial Reviews

Austere yet sweeping … Schmucler touches broad themes: religion and the power and abuses of the Catholic Church, revolution and repatriation, and the responsibility we have to our ancestors, to remember but also to move on.

On the Seawall

Humour, longing, love, sadness … A study of mankind that Schmucler reveals to the reader in The Guardian of Amsterdam Street.

Arte y Cultura

A deeply human book … Sergio Schmucler achieves a paradox of rare beauty: writing a book about exile that tells the story of someone who has decided not to leave his home.

La Voz