A luminous collection of dryly humorous stories that revel in the
surreal and fantastic, from the pen of José Eduardo Agualusa, winner of
the International Dublin Literary Award
Perfect for readers of Haruki Murakami, Julio Cortázar, and Namwali
Serpell's The Old Drift
Vividly translated into English for the first time by long-time Agualusa
collaborator Daniel Hahn, the jewel-like tales gathered in this
collection are an exuberant celebration of story-telling in all its
various forms.
On the sands of Itamaracá, an old fisherman dreams of fish: shad in the
morning, when the water's smooth and silvery, the Atlantic tarpon after
it rains, and a jack when the sea goes blue. Elsewhere, Borges sulks
away in a plantation of neverending banana tree, and the president of
the United States wakes from a coma speaking only Portuguese.
With "the lyrical experimentalism and unabashed weirdness of the
surrealist" (The Arts Desk), Agualusa offers a sly wink to the
fictional quality inherent in all narratives, whether they're
fishermen's tales, national histories, or the stories we tell ourselves.
