“La tentación del fracaso (The Temptation of Failure), the journal he maintained for much of his life, records with pained but acute and irrefutable insight his dignified poverty and his marginality to the political, intellectual and literary cultures of his time. It is a masterpiece that bears comparison to the diaries of those other connoisseurs of failure, Cesare Pavese and EM Cioran.”

“I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that La tentación del fracaso is heartbreaking, sensitive, and, above all, immeasurable. It’s heartbreaking as a living record of Ribeyro’s frustrations, ups and downs, and failures; sensitive in how it allows us to get to know the imperfect man behind the surname directly and openly; immeasurable because this is one of the books where reading it just once in your life is not enough.”