Stories with touches of Kafka and Cortázar

Short stories that, as must happen in good stories, finally surprise us. In the case of the 24 gathered in this book by the award-winning Italian-Mexican narrator and poet Fabio Morábito, the first impact is that what happens begins with something not at all fictional, with a banal fact or an absolutely trivial situation, which little by little becomes It changes and perhaps goes through one of those absurd moments that are part of everyday life, to which we do not give the slightest importance, and that in order to add realism, so that we realize that everything is true, they conclude in a unthinkable crisis but which certainly is still understandable, or by a reversal that returns everything to initial normality even if a dead person appears, who was previously a person who ordered robberies against an innocent person. In “The Nail in the Wall” the husband who has to put one up to hang a painting suddenly finds that he no longer deserves to endure anything, that, just like this one, he is perfect; Of course his wife does not think the same, and it is a nail that comes just to bring out everything repressed between them. In another case, grass at an airport can be of absolutely crucial importance. In another, the interest of a young translator in the teachings of a very experienced translator, who has other types of interests, turns into an unexpected topic of jealousy. In “Extras” the attention of a film director shifts to what is usually not looked at, and to what happens when the focus of attention changes and it is understood that the extras are fundamental to the story being told. Some of the most attractive stories, and there are many cases, lead to finding correspondences with those of great storytellers such as O’Henry or Kafka, Buzzati or Cortazar.

=Fabio Morábito, “The shadow of the mammoth” (Bs.As., Edhasa, 2023, 235 pages)