Woven on the Loom of Time

<div>Argentinian scholar and writer Enrique Anderson-Imbert is familiar to many North American students for his La Literatura de América Latina I and II which are widely used in college Spanish courses. But Anderson-Imbert is also a noted creative writer whose use of magical realism helped pave the way for such writers as Borges Cortázar Sábato and Ocampo. In this anthology Carleton Vail and Pamela Edwards-Mondragón have chosen stories from the period 1965 to 1985 to introduce English-speaking readers to the creative work of Enrique Anderson-Imbert. Representative stories from the collections The Cheshire Cat The Swindler Retires Madness Plays at Chess Klein's Bottle Two Women and One Julián and The Size of the Witches illustrate Anderson-Imbert's unique style and world view. Many are short short stories which Anderson-Imbert calls casos (instances). The range of subjects and points of view varies widely challenging such realities as time and space right and wrong science and religion. In a prologue Anderson-Imbert tells an imaginary reader Each one of my stories is a closed entity brief because it has caught a single spasm of life in a single leap of fantasy. Only a reading of all my stories will reveal my world-view. The reader asks And are you sure that it is worth the trouble? Anderson-Imbert replies No. The unexpected ironic ending is one of the great pleasures of reading Enrique Anderson-Imbert.</div>