02617cam a22003253u 450000100060000000300070000600500170001300600020003000700050003200800410003704000110007804100170008905000070010610000370011324500290015025000230017926400510020230000470025333600260030033700260032633800360035250000310038850801130041952015450053253400590207765300360213685600570217285600430222999900190227278630UtSlPG20260610134826.0mcr n260607r20261929utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d  aUtSlPG 7aes2iso639-1 4aPQ1 aJarnés, Benjamín,d1888-194910aLocura y muerte de Nadie  aPrimera edición. 1aSalt Lake City, UT :bProject Gutenberg,c2026  a1 online resource :bmultiple file formats  atextbtxt2rdacontent  acomputerbc2rdamedia  aonline resourcebcr2rdacarrier  aRelease date is 2026-05-07  aRamón Pajares Box. (This book was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.)  aLocura y muerte de Nadie by Benjamín Jarnés is a novel written in the early 20th century. It is a modernist, introspective exploration of identity and anonymity in a bustling city, centering on Juan Sánchez y Sánchez, a man convinced he is “Nadie,” and Arturo, the cool-eyed observer drawn into his orbit. Through banks, bars, bedrooms, and cabarets, the book probes the instability of selfhood, the pull of the crowd, and the seductions of desire.

The opening of the novel presents Arturo encountering Juan in a feverish banking hall where numbers, machines, and commodity prices blur people into types, until Juan reveals a tattooed signature on his chest—his desperate proof of self. Over drinks, Juan confesses his terror of not being, while Arturo, an insurance inspector, urges action over abstraction. A parallel thread follows Arturo’s clandestine affair with Rebeca, whose sensual presence contrasts with talk of essence and existence; when he later visits Juan’s home for dinner, Rebeca appears as Matilde, Juan’s wife, and a tense four-person tableau with the brazen cousin Alfredo snaps into place. A night at a cabaret deepens the identity crisis: Juan is briefly “recognized,” only to be rejected when the woman realizes he is not the man she thought, leaving him to cry that he is “Nadie.” The section closes with a sudden hope—an invitation from the Countess of Monte Azul—that Juan seizes as a possible noble origin to anchor his wavering self. (This is an automatically generated summary.)  pOriginally published:cMadrid: Ediciones Oriente, 1929  aSpanish fiction -- 20th century4 uhttps://archive.org/details/locuraymuerteden00jarn_040uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78630  c119348d119348