Short stories
Un hombre muerto a puntapiés
Not translated into English
Pablo Palacio · 1927
Synopsis
Nine short stories, ironic and unsettling. In the one that gives the collection its title, an anonymous reader comes across a brief item in the Diario de la Tarde: a certain Octavio Ramírez, described as "vicioso", has been beaten to death in the street. Obsessed by this news story, he sets out to reconstruct the crime by induction, in a methodical parody of the police investigation.
Context
The collection came out in Quito in January 1927, a few months before Débora. The title story, published as early as April 1926 in the magazine Hélice, is regarded as the first Ecuadorian text to deal openly with homosexuality; its detached narrator, ironic in tone, lays bare the prejudice and indifference of a society. The story has been adapted for the stage, for television and, in 2015, as a comic. The book has not been translated into French; in English, only the title story has appeared, in 2026, in the magazine Asymptote.
Who it is for
For discovering a pioneer of literary modernity in Ecuador, his short stories, his black humour and the daring that shocked Quito.
Prizes and reception
Benjamín Carrión saw Palacio as an anti-romantic and ironic storyteller; the collection, which caused a scandal in 1927, is considered foundational.