Short stories
El arca
Not translated into English
Óscar Acosta · 1956
Synopsis
Eighteen very short stories, in a precise and economical language, where the absurd, magic and myth mingle with the real. A hunter shoots a stag he had seen in a dream before setting out; in a first-person story, the letter “Lh” comes to ask the narrator to intercede for her with the Royal Academy so that she may enter the language. Others open onto a second reality, where several versions of things coexist.
Context
The book was published in Lima in 1956; its author is twenty-three and belongs to the generation of 1950. Critics note the influence of the great authors of the century's fantastic fiction, and a Honduran short-story writer drew from it a formula: the most complex can be written in the simplest terms. A recent study reads these texts as micro-stories, which leave ordinary reality for the dreamlike.
Who it is for
Stories of a few pages, in Spanish, with no French or English translation; the language is simple.
Prizes and reception
Counted by José Antonio Funes among the ten key books of Honduran narrative; it is held to have broken with costumbrismo.
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