The Exiles And Other Stories (Texas Pan American Series)

The Exiles and Other Stories (Texas Pan American Series)

Review"As an author of the macabre and of nature, Quiroga redefined the borders of the fantastic, realizing that pure realism was an abomination of the marvelous and horrific reality of the Latin American jungle." (Review: Latin American Literature and Arts)"Each of the book's stories introduces the reader to a unique denizen of the wild-logger or laborer, small landowner or smalltime experimenter, who must extract an arduous living from the land and struggle with the loneliness of frontier life. Quiroga is at his best when he explores the laconic comradeship of these isolated men." (Choice)Tales of risk and danger, suffering, disease, horror, and death. Tales, also, of courage and dignity, hard work, and human endurance in the face of hostile nature and the frequent brutality of men. And tales flavored with piquant touches of humor and bemused irony.These are the stories of the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga, here presented in an important compilation of thirteen of his most compelling tales, sensitively selected and translated by J. David Danielson. Author of some two hundred pieces of fiction, often compared to the works of Kipling, Jack London, and Edgar Allan Poe, Quiroga set many of his stories in the territory of Misiones in northeastern Argentina, the subtropical jungle region where he spent much of his life.Included here are stories from Los desterrados (1926) often said to be his best book, as well as others from Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte (1917), Anaconda (1921), and El Desierto (1924). The publication of this selection marks the first appearance in English of all but two of the thirteen stories.Quiroga here presents a wide range of characters: parents and children, servant girls and prostitutes, landowners and lumber barons, foremen and laborers, natives and immigrants, in stories pervaded by a vision of life that is elemental, incisive, and essentially tragic. The Exiles and Other Stories shows the versatility and skill that have made him a classic Spanish American writer. It complements and illumines The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories, selected and translated by Margaret Sayers Peden, also published by the University of Texas Press.From Publishers WeeklyIn one of the 13 stories by this Uruguayan writer collected here, two men stranded during a rainstorm stumble on a family gathered around a very sick boy. Nearby is the yaciayatere, a bird that screeches out a warning when death is near. The men are certain that the boy will die, although the parents don't seem to realize this. The story offers an unexpected twist at the end and carries the message: don't laugh in the face of death. In "The Wilderness," a rough-and-ready man named Subercasaux is kind and gentle when around his children but filled with panic when he thinks of the deadly infection that is taking over his body. Quiroga's prose effectively conveys the despair, the hope and the fear that grips his South American characters.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.From Library JournalQuiroga (1878-1937) set his best stories in the Argentine territory of Misiones during "the heroic days of logging and yerba mate." Anecdotal and seemingly artless, they parade a rich mixture of frontier types: vagrants, eccentrics, exiles, ne'er-do-wells. But the real protagonist here is Misiones itself in its various manifestations: the marvelously described snake in "A Workingman"; a squall sweeping the Parana River in "The Yaciyatere"; the capricious cold snap in "The Charcoal-Makers." Local color fiction at its vigorous best. Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.About the AuthorJ. David Danielson (1916-2010) was Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Hartford, Connecticut.Elsa K. Gambarini taught Spanish at Yale University for several years.