The Irreparable

by Gabriel Payares, Paul Filev (Translator), Katie Brown (Contributor)

The Irreparable is a collection of six stories by Venezuelan author Gabriel Payares, translated into English for the first time by Paul Filev. The characters of these stories are alienated from themselves and from the people around them — puppets of the sometimes mundane, sometimes violent plot that controls their lives. They have either migrated or been left behind by others who have, unsure where they stand. For some of Payares’ worst-off characters, there is nowhere for anyone to go. In “For Elisa,” the narrator watches “our hero” try to use the chaos caused by the military’s repression of anti-austerity protests to his own advantage. But the advantage he gains is fleeting, and the violence of the day quickly takes over. In “The Fish Tank,” a similarly detached eye watches as a couple face a challenge they cannot overcome. It is a story with no identifiable setting beyond a hospital and a home, and is the most removed from any discussion of Venezuela’s crisis or migration, but it remains infused with the sense of fragmentation and detachment that pervades the whole collection. In Filev’s translation, Payares’ language is spare, natural, and uncomplicated, trapping the reader in a series of unrelenting, unsettling dreams.

Gabriel Payares is a Venezuelan writer living in Buenos Aires. He is the author of multiple short-story collections, and he has won several national literary awards in Venezuela. English translations of his stories have appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Asymptote, and The Southern Review.

Paul Filev lives in Melbourne and translates from Macedonian and Spanish into English. His translations include The Lisbon Syndrome by Eduardo Sánchez Rugeles, which was named one of World Literature Today’s 75 Notable Translations of 2022, and Figures of Wood by María Pérez-Talavera.

110 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2025

About the author

Escritor venezolano. Licenciado en Letras, Magíster en Literatura Latinoamericana y Magíster en Escritura Creativa. Ha recibido numerosos galardones nacionales como cuentista, entre los que destacan el Concurso de Autores Inéditos de Monte Ávila Editores Latinoamericana (2008), el 66º Concurso de Cuentos de El Nacional (2011) y Premio Nacional de Literatura Rafael María Baralt (2014). También recibió una primera mención en el XIII Concurso Iberoamericano de Cuento Julio Cortázar (La Habana, 2014) y una mención especial en el Concurso Internacional de Cuento Abelardo Castillo (Buenos Aires, 2021). Estuvo entre los autores invitados al International Writer's Workshop de la Hong Kong Baptist University en 2020. Sus cuentos han sido traducidos al inglés. Vive en Buenos Aires desde 2014.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This writer has the potential to write compelling stories, and the topics, themes and settings, even the concepts, are highly interesting. I would usually adore a short story collection like this, but sadly many of this writer’s merits are overshadowed by the fact that it is clearly written by a man who seems to lack an understanding of women, and the somewhat repulsive sensory imagery that appears from time to time. I will need to think more about this book in order to come to a more comprehensive opinion of it.