Playful, philosophizing, and gloriously unpredictable, Andres Neuman's short stories consider love, lechery, history, mortality, family secrets, therapy, Borges, fallen nuns, translators, and storytelling itself. These stories - the first ever collection of Neuman's in English - are told with a voice that is wry, questioning, sometimes mordantly funny, yet always generously humane.

Contents:                 

THE THINGS WE DON'T DO; Happiness; A Line in the Sand; Anabela and the Rock; Second-hand; Sor Juana's Private Hell; A Terribly Perfect Couple; The Things We Don't Do; RELATIVES AND STRANGERS; Delivery; A Mother Ago; A Chair for Somebody; Barefoot; Rotation of Light; Juan, José; My False Name; THE LAST MINUTE; Bathtub; Poison; Man Shot; Outside No Birds Were Singing; The Laughing Suicide; After Elena; A Cigarette; THE INNOCENCE TEST; The Innocence Test; Monologue of the Customs Officer; Monologue of the Monster; How I Killed John Lennon; Clothes; Embrace.; Mr President's Hotel; END AND BEGINNING OF LEXIS; Piotr Czerny's Last Poem; The End of Reading; The Gold of the Blind Men; The Poem-Translating Machine; On Destiny; Theory of Lines; End and Beginning of Lexis; DODECALOGUES FROM A STORYTELLER; Dodecalogue from a Storyteller; New Dodecalogue from a Storyteller; Third Dodecalogue from a Storyteller; Fourth Dodecalogue: The Post-Modern Short Story.