Oh, I so wanted to slap a character at the end of Liliana Heker's story, "The Stolen Party"!
It also contains the immortal line, "The problem with you, young lady, is that you like to fart higher than your ass." So much better than, "You're talking rubbish" ??
I love this photo of Heker with her cat ?
"In paralysing Argentina for over ten years, the generals also abolished several generations of writers, because it is almost impossible to write while your next-door neighbours are being dragged away screaming."
Manguel's introduction to the story by Liliana Heker is rather chilling. She edited a literary magazine and refused to flee into exile saying, "To be heard, we must shout from within."
In a way, it's probably just as well that so few of the writers in this anthology have easily obtainable books translated into English, as otherwise I'd be overspending (even more) on book orders! As it is, Amparo Dávila's 2-page horror, "Haute Cuisine" is enough to get me searching for her own collection, "The Houseguest & Other Stories".
If I wasn't already vegetarian, "Haute Cuisine" might well have converted me! ?
"Human vanities never seem as vain as when we are about to lose them - so precious, so fragile, so incomprehensible."
"I need something to believe in other than this senseless destruction, these useless horrors, this emptiness."
- Knight, Death and the Devil, by Vlady Kociancich: pictured with the Durer engraving she used as inspiration for her story. Sadly, it seems little of her work is translated into English, but I'll be keeping a lookout.
"I stopped at the first turning of the path that crossed the forest."
- "Knight, Death and the Devil", by Vlady Kociancich
This is the 1st line of the story I'm up to in this collection. Kociancich's story was included in an Argentine anthology edited by Manguel, who invited writers to submit works based on Durer's 1513 engraving, "Ritter, Tod und Teufel". Borges submitted a poem, & it was he who recommended his student, Kociancich, to Manguel.
pickThe 3rd story in the anthology is by Marta Lynch, "Latin Lovers", and it's wonderful! A first-person account of being the mistress of a married man, moved into a flat for his convenience, of the love & loneliness of her existence, and of the already fading passion and growing sadness summed up in the repeated words, "But no". I think, perhaps, it's those words that help her recover her agency. There's a power, too, in her seeming lack of regret.
The Cataloguer part of me gets irritated when I read a book of short stories by women authors edited by a man, as it will show on my Library Thing stats as a book written by a man! As it's Alberto Manguel he can be forgiven, I suppose ?
"These stories were written with tears, blood and kisses."
- Isabel Allende, from the foreword
pickMany amazing authors I've never heard of and some very powerful stories.
We still live with unquestioned laws.
From the Heker story, The Stolen Party. Now my favourite expression; in Spanish "le gusta cagar mas arriba del culo" ?
Great story about classism.
The story is The Stolen Party.
I have not read it yet so i don't know what I feel about her writing but either way her bio sheds a very blatant light on issues that have always plagued war torn/ fascist run countries.
This intro already had me set to look into Albalucía Angel more but this 3 page story solidified that thought!
What emotion in 3 pages! Crazy, powerful.
Just some bleak reading for this monday morning....
This is quite interesting- I've never thought of SF&F in relation to Spanish writers, but I'm not a huge fan of the genre. For those who are, maybe check out Gorodischer, though quite short, this story made an impact. @llwheeler
(Also, pls note this collection is from 86 so this note about Sf&F might be a little outdated.)
Morality and women. Women as mentors. The effect of 1 man on a woman's impeccable moral conduct.
Latin Lover by Marta Lynch, Argentina
Fantastic Brazilian short story- the idea of a "practical or applied metonymy."
The Fall by Armonía Somers, Uruguay
"Imaginative literature"/ early surrealism
Latin America is an imaginary place.
Other Fires: Short Fiction by Latin American Women | 
