Roberto Arlt followed The Seven Madmen with Los Lanzallamas (The Flamethrowers) in 1931, picking up the story of The Seven Madmen right where he’d left off two years before and fleshing out the back stories of Erdosain’s sidekicks—characters of extraordinary extravagance such as the Astrologer, Hipolita (The lame whore), Arturo Haffner (The Melancholy Ruffian) and Gregorio Barsut—while at the same time trailing Remo’s descent into the madness that would inevitably compel him towards the violent and tragic climax of the novel’s denouement.
