Born in Spain, Alfau was the first Spanish speaker to write and publish a novel in English in the U.S.

He came to New York in 1916, at 14, with no knowledge of English. He taught himself the language so well that in 1928 he did something unprecedented: He wrote a novel in English: "Locos: A Comedy of Gestures," published in 1936. The author was paid all of $250 for it.

Critics loved the experimental novel, and among other accolades, Alfau has been compared with the author of "Lolita," the great Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who also wrote in English. "Locos," though, remained on bookstore shelves mostly unread.

Alfau worked for some time at the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario and finally settled on a translator job at the Morgan Bank on Broad St., where he remained until he retired.

But in the 1940s, between translations, he managed to write a second novel, also in English.

When he couldn't find a publisher for "Chromos," his new book became his last. A disillusioned Alfau would never write fiction again.

Reality can be stranger than fiction, and the story of how "Chromos" finally was published in 1990, 50 years after it was written, is one of those cases.

Steven Moore, the owner of a small editorial house, had found "Locos" at a garage sale. He liked it so much that he looked up Alfau in the telephone book and asked him for permission to reprint it.

The old man was not enthusiastic. By then he was a resident at the Rego Park nursing home, where, on Feb. 18, 1999, his blue eyes would close one last time.

But Moore persisted, and talked Alfau not only into letting him reprint "Locos" but also into letting him publish his second novel.

"Chromos," the book rejected by publisher after publisher a half-century before, became one of five finalists for the 1990 National Book Award, one of the country's highest literary honors.

Alfau was 88 by then, and with no family or friends in New York, he wished only for death to rescue him from the gloomy little room at the Woodhaven Blvd. nursing home.

"Chromos," an experimental work with no plot to speak of, is beautifully written. This is an excerpt:

"There is something about most of the East Side, rain or shine, that lies somewhere between what we call reality and what we call a dream. It is the quality of a memory that has lain forsaken like an unattended grave. Nowhere else in New York can one find so ever-present the spirit of the has-been, of the window of a shop on Sunday inhabited only by our own reflection as we go by."

But the author did not crave recognition any more. In a rare interview published after the nomination of "Chromos" was announced, he had this to say:

"It [having been rediscovered] would have interested me much more when I was younger. Old age is a nuisance. You can't do anything. I can't even walk to the bank."

He died at 97, another lonely old man among the thousands of forgotten lives in New York's nursing homes.

That is why, 100 years after his birth in Spain, we want to remember the poignant life of - Felipe Alfau, true literary pioneer.