Short stories · A way to begin
Tales of Love, Madness and Death
Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte
Horacio Quiroga · 1917
Synopsis
Eighteen stories in which love, illness and madness lead to death. A man bitten by a snake goes down the river in a dugout canoe to seek help, between fear and hope; a young bride grows weaker by the day, beside a distant husband, from an ailment no doctor can explain; four sick brothers, sitting all day facing a wall, watch the maid bleed a hen in the kitchen. Other stories follow dogs, workers on the yerba mate plantations or log fishers on the upper Paraná.
Context
The volume appeared in 1917 in Buenos Aires, from the Sociedad Cooperativa Editorial Limitada. It brings together stories first published in the city's magazines, above all Caras y Caretas, where they often fitted on a single page. The author had chosen the title and wanted no comma in it; the first two editions respect this, while some editions published in his lifetime add them. He later withdrew three stories from the volume, which now contains only fifteen. A French translation appeared in 1984, an English translation in 2024.
Who it is for
Short stories in Spanish, of immediate tension and often tragic; translated into French and into English.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success with both public and critics, it established its author as a master of the short story; several stories are among the most frequently anthologised.
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