María José Ferrada and Elizabeth Bryer on Translating “How to Order the Universe” The precocious seven-year-old protagonist of María José Ferrada’s picaresque novel How to Order the Universe, referred to simply as “M,” is one of the most astute, enchanting, and affecting characters I have ever had the pleasure to translate. Her concept of the universe, which she cribs from a hardware catalog, is an astonishing metaphor. I won’t spoil the delight of encountering it in the book by detailing too much about it here, except to say that it is used throughout the novel to both comic and insightful effect—that is, until the metaphor fails under the weight brought to bear on it by the Pinochet dictatorship, and M’s life is changed forever.