John R. King (1)

A collection of short stories from around the Spanish-speaking world. This has both parallel English text and explanatory footnotes, and the stories are arranged in approximate order of difficulty. A bit too much magical realism for my taste, but I definitely learned some new idioms!

This was a good collection of stories. Most of them were relatively easy to read in Spanish (intermediate-advanced level). The hardest, language-wise was probably Cortazar's story. Most of the stories were Borges-like mini-mysteries. The parallel text saved me the trouble of looking up some words. But do be aware, as some translation is wrong (even I was able to pick up on some mistakes in the translations.) I only didn't read the last story, because the first two paragraphs were entire show more sentences! show less

Book's first short story isn't bad. Stories' translation(s) very understandble (comes with notes for translations at the end of book). Would recommend to anyone interested in good short stories and learning spanish as a second language.

Reflecting the variety of modern Spanish literature, these stories range from the sharp insights of Gabriel García Marquez's "María dos Prazeres" to Isabel Allende's powerful evocation of the oral traditions of the Amerindian "Walimai," the deceptive simplicity of Javier Marías's "On the Honeymoon," and the philosophical speculation of Laura Freixas's "Absurd Ending."