The Black Sheep and Other Fables

36/2021. This is a collection of very short fables. They ask questions such as "Was Penelope weaving while she waited for Odysseus to stop travelling or was Odysseus travelling while he waited for Penelope to stop weaving?" and "If faith moves mountains then would fewer people die in landslides if we abandoned our faiths?" Clever, witty, amusing. Readers who didn't receive a classical education might find a few glancing references to Aesop or Horace whooshing over their heads but Monterroso mostly uses ideas familiar to inheritors of "Western" education, e.g. the lion as king, the wise owl, the cunning vixen, etc.

A bunch of short snippets in the vein of Borges' 'Imaginary beings'--or sometimes even a little Calvino-ish. Most of these light satires center around animals of one sort or another. Anyway at face value they can easily be taken as harmless but Monterroso has a way of subtly inserting social comment to give it that little extra punch. Not an easy book to find out there but you can definitely do a lot worse.

Me gustaron las historias, sobre todo la historia del Mono que Quiso ser Escritor Satîrico, por sus comentarias sobre la condiciôn humana, pero no pude terminar pues, me encontré deprimida por la verdad sobre la gente, aunque se hace reir, también se sabe que no hay manera de cambiar esas cosas.

Mi libro favorito. Cuarenta y pico de textos perfectos desde donde se les mire, ni una sola palabra de más.