Argentinian scholar and writer Enrique Anderson-Imbert is familiar to many North American students for his
La Literatura de América Latina I and II
, which are widely used in college Spanish courses. But Anderson-Imbert is also a noted creative writer, whose use of "magical realism" helped pave the way for such writers as Borges, Cortázar, Sábato, and Ocampo. In this anthology, Carleton Vail and Pamela Edwards-Mondragón have chosen stories from the period 1965 to 1985 to introduce English-speaking readers to the creative work of Enrique Anderson-Imbert.
Representative stories from the collections
The Cheshire Cat, The Swindler Retires, Madness Plays at Chess, Klein's Bottle, Two Women and One Julián,
and
The Size of the Witches
illustrate Anderson-Imbert's unique style and world view. Many are "short short" stories, which Anderson-Imbert calls
casos
(instances). The range of subjects and points of view varies widely, challenging such "realities" as time and space, right and wrong, science and religion.
In a prologue, Anderson-Imbert tells an imaginary reader, "Each one of my stories is a closed entity, brief because it has caught a single spasm of life in a single leap of fantasy. Only a reading of all my stories will reveal my world-view." The reader asks, "And are you sure that it is worth the trouble?" Anderson-Imbert replies, "No." The unexpected, ironic ending is one of the great pleasures of reading Enrique Anderson-Imbert.