Maqroll is one of those rare literary figures who, like Don Quijote, Pedro Páramo or Captain Ahab, have transcended the story they are the protagonists of, becoming archetypes of universal literature. In the words of Javier Reverte, the literary creation of Álvaro Mutis is “a true monument of contemporary Latin American literature”.

At the age of 63, Álvaro Mutis revisited a character who appeared recurrently in his work, making him the central axis of a narrative cycle consisting of seven novels written between 1986 and 1993, which the author entitled Empresas y tribulaciones de Maqroll el Gaviero (The Enterprises and Tribulations of Maqroll the Seafarer) and in which Mutis plays the biographer of the sailor Maqroll.

Maqroll is the anti-hero, a wandering character in search of the unknown, for whom the essential part of the journey is the journey itself, and who symbolises the deepest questions of the human being, the ports and shores of the soul.

RM’s edition of Mutis’s work stands out for the quality and care that has gone into its design, the cover of which has been produced by the Hermanos Berenguer studio, and on the front of which is an image by the photographers Albarrán-Cabrera.