Contemporary Short Stories from Central America

This volume collects some of the best short fiction from the six Spanish-speaking countries of Central America - Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Selected from stories written between 1963 and 1988, it is the only collection currently available with such broad representation of active Central American writers. Many of the stories are quite sophisticated, dealing with middle-class concerns more often associated with the more developed countries of the world, and often utilize elements of the absurd or techniques of magical realism. In "The Circumstantial or the Ephemeral, " Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso depicts the strain on a couple's relationship when the husband, a distinctly mediocre writer, wins a literary contest. "Floral Caper" by Costa Rican Carmen Naranjo depicts a man who floods his house with flowers to bolster his failed sense of self-esteem, and, in "Love Is Spelled with a G, " Panamanian Rosa Maria Britton writes of a young mulatto city girl who attempts to escape the near-hopelessness of her racial and social situation by snagging an anglo U.S. military man for a husband. Some of the stories deal with war - the unending struggle against dictators and military power that is such a fact of life for Central Americans. In "To Tell the Story, " Salvadoran writer Alfonso Quijada Urias describes the welcome received by a group of revolutionaries from the citizens of a village they have just taken over - and the subsequent rain of destruction by the more powerful military forces. Several of the stories explore the realm of the writer's imagination. In "Metaphors, " Samuel Rovinski (Costa Rica) shows how a writer's superficial attempt tointerpret experience metaphorically cripples him in social circumstances, while, in "Gloria Wouldn't Wait, " Panamanian Jaime Garcia Saucedo focuses on the egotism of the writer's imagination as it tries to convert the tragedies of everyday life into some kind of literary document whos