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The book brings together fourteen short stories by the Argentine writer Bioy Casares, published between 1948 and 1969. The volume opens the Cosac Naify series specially dedicated to the author's works. These Fantastic Stories are permeated with a fascination for ancient culture as well as a perplexity at science and modern behavior. There are mysteries that are woven around references to Celtic legends and pagan gods, while other tales include alien beings and sinister technologies, capable, for example, of absorbing and perpetuating the soul of a living being. These investigations and exercises in fantasy are marked by an erudition that involves the reader, without ever slipping into exhibitionism. The iconographic research enriches the edition and brings selected photos from the National Archives of Argentina and from family albums. The book's appendix also has comments on the author and a summary of the plot of each story, as well as specific clarifications about cultural references and intertextuality. There is also a list of film adaptations of the short stories and a good bibliography of Bioy. The work received a careful and inspired translation by José Geraldo Couto.
Fantastic Stories
Adolfo Bioy Casares
"I've always loved Paulina. In one of my earliest memories, Paulina and I are hidden in an obscure square surrounded by laurel trees, in a garden with two stone lions. Paulina told me: “I like blue, I like grapes, I like ice, I like ice. roses, I like white horses.” I understood that my happiness had begun, because in those preferences I could identify with Paulina. Ours have already come together. "Ours" at that time meant hers and mine."
Adolfo Bioy Casares. In memory of Paulina, in Histórias Fantástiáca
excerpt
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