Stories by Esther Díaz Llanillo
Translated by Manuel Martínez and Sara E. Cooper
ISBN 978-1-944176-10-5
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Díaz Llanillo is known for her blending of paranormal fantasy with black humor and metaphysical undertones; her short fiction has been described as bizarre, uncanny, absurd, macabre, intellectual and ironic. Her work explores universal questions of right and wrong, good and evil, real and unreal. The tales in this collection are set in the city of Havana, although to enter her fiction is to cross a frontier into strange spaces and imaginary worlds. Díaz Llanillo takes everyday scenes of Cuban life, rotates them on the axis of her imagination, then reveals the hallucinations, ghosts, dreams, and supernatural forces that lie beneath the surface.
Blurbs & Reviews
"An intriguing, chilling collection that demands introspection from its readers... Llanillo’s bilingual short stories explore the spiritual, macabre, and mundane." --Kirkus Review
"These stories show a profound understanding of how we are both imprisoned and freed by the myriad and complex layers of our own imaginations. Combining horror and humor, reality and fantasy, sympathy and rigorous observation, Llanillo creates characters that are deeply changed by their experiences. As are we, from reading them." —Nancy Kress, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of the Beggars in Spain series
"Stories where the inexplicable and supernatural can coexist withhumor… This Cubanabooks edition is ample enough, that with its critical and explanatory texts readers will be able to reach a nuanced, rich, and complete picture of Díaz-Llanillo’s oeuvre." —José Miguel Sardiñas Fernández, Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí, México
"About Spirits and Other Mysteries/ Sobre espíritus y otros misterios reveals Díaz-Llanillo’s kinship with Kafka and Borges, with whom she shares a propensity toward allegory and metaphysics conveyed in parables characterized by temporal play. Like Silvina Ocampo, Piñera, Cortázar and Rosario Ferré, she evinces a dark and quite cynical sense of humor. The bilingual edition is essential to fill vacuums in Cuban literary history, an exceptional book worthy of serious perusal by any scholar of Cuban literature." —Jorge Febles, Professor Emeritus, University of North Florida
