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.

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.

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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.

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

Arte y Cultura

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

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