Fabio Morabito

“It’s surprising to see, for example, how something as simple as making a photocopy manages to affect us when we see this action repeated five or six times. There’s the woman who places a sheet on the glass, lowers the lid, presses the start button, waits a few seconds while the scanner light sweeps over the sheet, and removes the photocopy that comes out the bottom tray. She is only one of the extras who move around the office, and once the actors enter the scene, we will hardly show more notice her, but now, her actions next to the photocopier, repeated over and over again in the performance prior to the shot, acquire a more profound meaning than we expected. We think: how beautiful this is, how the dead must envy us, and what wouldn’t any of them give to make a photocopy in an office, like that woman! In fact, we make a point to do the same as her a soon as the opportunity presents itself, certain that the simple act of making a photocopy, if we pay the proper attention to it, will bring us a wealth of happiness. Actually, the performances that Pencroff places in front of our eyes, made up of insignificant gestures and actions, convince us that if we always conducted ourselves like extras in a movie, taking the greatest care in everything we do, even the most insignificant things, our life would be immensely happy.”
― Fabio Morábito, The Shadow of the Mammoth (Translated by Curtis Bauer) show less

Based on a thorough ethnographic and linguistic investigation of the most representative stories of oral tradition in Mexico, the storyteller and poet Fabio Morábito gathers and rewrites with purely literary criteria 125 folk tales from regions ranging from Sonora and Chiapas, from the Tarahumara to the Chontales, and, beyond, to California and New Mexico, to reappear later in Veracruz and Querétaro.

Accompanied by beautiful illustrations by eight Mexican illustrators, the selected stories show more offer an insight into the ancestral themes that have endured in the tradition of Mexican peoples: the creation of the world, the appearance of the Sun and the Moon or the first man, as well as stories featuring kings, princesses, talking animals and full of miraculous transformations and journeys full of dangers, where humour, cunning and a sobering message are the main ingredients. Stories that after infinite mutations over the centuries, crossing continents, changing languages, have come to take up residence in this essential anthology, a beautiful, stateless, migrant and mixed-race book, which is a metaphor for the very essence of literature and the human soul. show less

El libro lo compré sin saber realmente qué cuentos podría haber, ni los títulos, nada.
Muchos de los relatos se parecen a los que cuentan en España, por la clara influencia de los relatos clásicos. Hay otros que son verdaderamente lindos y algunos son muy... "violentos". Había uno en particular que parecía una versión gore de un cuento clásico, que seguramente todos los hispanohablantes escuchamos alguna vez.
Es recomendable. No es un libro para niños, digamos que no es un libro show more para leerles antes de dormir. Pero es una muy buena recopilación.
Recomendable. show less

An odd book, but with interesting ideas about hearing and listening, and being comfortable in one's own skin.