Collected stories

SHORT STORIES. ANAGRAMA, 2021. 825 PAGES.

The collected stories of Ricardo Piglia, a contemporary Spanish-language great.

This volume gathers together all of Ricardo Piglia's short stories compiled and arranged by the author shortly before he passed away. Piglia wrote short fiction throughout his career and readers will find it all here, from his first collection published in 1967 (and subsequently revised and expanded with new texts) to his final works written near the end of his life, including The Casebook of Captain Croce, which is both a homage and twist on the crime genre Piglia so loved. In between are the longer narratives Perpetual Prison and the volumes False Name - which includes a brilliant homage to Roberto Arlt - and Moral Tales.
The layout of this book provides an overview of how Piglia developed as a short story writer as well as allowing us to appreciate his rich diversity. He described his approach to the genre as starting out influenced by the models of Hemingway and Borges before developing into something far more hybrid, open and unconventional: he deliberately inserted reviews into stories or merged fiction with non-fiction and autobiography to produce texts that continuously transcended established categories, exploring every variation possible: autobiography, crime story, historic narratives, literary theory, diary, melodrama and fantasy.
These are tales that, in addition to telling stories, open up new paths, pushing boundaries and reflecting on the art of storytelling. One after the other, they offer new perspectives on Argentina and its society and feature a vast range of characters, although the lovable loser recurs time and again. Another ever present is of course Emilio Renzi, the author's alter ego.
As one would expect from one of the leading Spanish-language authors of the past half a century, Ricardo Piglia's short fiction brims over with his extraordinary and distinctive literary quality, making this comprehensive collection an essential tome.

PUBLISHED BY: Spanish ANAGRAMA

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