Microfictions

Cinderellas sisters surgically modify their feet to win the princes love. A werewolf gathers up enough courage to visit a dentist. A medium trying to reach the afterworld gets a recorded message. A fox and a badger compete to out-fool each other. Whether writing of insomnia from a mosquitos point of view or showing us what happens after the princess kisses the frog, Ana Mara Shua, in these fleet and incandescent stories, is nothing if not pithyexcept, of course, wildly entertaining. Some as short as a sentence, these microfictions have been selected and translated from four different books. Flashes of insight, cracks of wit, twists of logic, and quirks of language: these are fictions in the distinguished Argentinean tradition of Borges and Cortzar and Denevi, as powerful as they are brief. One of Argentinas most prolific and distinguished writers, and acclaimed worldwide, Shua displays in these microfictions the epitome of her humor, riddling logic, and mastery over our imagination. Now, for the first time in English, the fox transforms itself into a fable, and the reader is invited to find the tail.