Novel
The Partner
El socio
Jenaro Prieto · 1928
Opening lines
IMPOSIBLE! Necesito consultarlo con mi socio...»
Impossible! I need to consult my partner...
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from memoriachilena.gob.cl
Synopsis
Pardo, a Santiago businessman who wants to escape financial mediocrity, invents an English partner, Davis, at first to turn away embarrassing offers of money, then to make a place for himself in stock-market dealings. He soon discovers that this Davis interests everyone: people want to meet him, deal with him, entrust business to him, and the imaginary partner takes on a life of his own, which his inventor must keep up relentlessly. According to the English publisher of 1931, the comedy gradually turns to drama.
Context
The novel appeared in 1928; its first edition sold out in less than a month and it went through more than sixteen reissues, according to Memoria Chilena. Max Daireaux translated it into French as early as 1931 under the title Mon associé M. Davis, and the English The Partner appeared the same year in London. Pablo Faúndez Morán has shown that it was translated and presented in several European countries from 1930 to 1936, through intellectual and political networks that Chile preferred to forget. The cinema adapted it several times, from 1939 to 1996.
Who it is for
A brief, fast-moving satire of the stock exchange and business, translated into French and English as early as 1931.
Prizes and reception
For Pablo Faúndez Morán, an international success that Chile attributed solely to the literary quality of the book.
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