The Irreparable

The Irreparable is a collection of six stories by Venezuelan author Gabriel Payares, translated into English for the first time by Paul Filev. The characters of these stories are alienated from themselves and from the people around them — puppets of the sometimes mundane, sometimes violent plot that controls their lives. They have either migrated or been left behind by others who have, unsure where they stand. For some of Payares’ worst-off characters, there is nowhere for anyone to go. In “For Elisa,” the narrator watches “our hero” try to use the chaos caused by the military’s repression of anti-austerity protests to his own advantage. But the advantage he gains is fleeting, and the violence of the day quickly takes over. In “The Fish Tank,” a similarly detached eye watches as a couple face a challenge they cannot overcome. It is a story with no identifiable setting beyond a hospital and a home, and is the most removed from any discussion of Venezuela’s crisis or migration, but it remains infused with the sense of fragmentation and detachment that pervades the whole collection. In Filev’s translation, Payares’ language is spare, natural, and uncomplicated, trapping the reader in a series of unrelenting, unsettling dreams.

Gabriel Payares is a Venezuelan writer living in Buenos Aires. He is the author of multiple short-story collections, and he has won several national literary awards in Venezuela. English translations of his stories have appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Asymptote, and The Southern Review.

Paul Filev lives in Melbourne and translates from Macedonian and Spanish into English. His translations include The Lisbon Syndrome by Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles, which was named one of World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2022, and Figures of Wood by María Pérez-Talavera.