Latin American Short Story

The enormous body of short story anthologies from the nineteen countries of Spanish America and Brazil testifies to their importance for writers, editors, readers, and, especially, for schools and universities, teachers and students. The study of anthologies and their contents can be particularly revealing for many of the questions looming large in critical discourse, particularly those on canon formation and the relations between literature and cultural institutions; but researching this corpus is difficult because it varies greatly in quality, distribution, and format. The present volume for the first time gathers this mass of material and organizes it for systematic study. The main section comprises annotated listings of 1302 short story anthologies: those with stories from all or most of the countries grouped together, including a section of English-language anthologies; those from countries of a region; and those from individual nations. For most entries a full listing of contents is provided along with brief commentary. A second section comprises annotated bibliographies of criticism of the short story, similarly arranged with materials for Latin America as a whole as well as regionally and nationally. The volume ends with four indexes: of authors of the stories; of authors of essays, introductions, and other critical materials; of titles of the critical works; and of themes. An essential tool for scholars working on Latin American narrative, this bibliography will also serve as a practical finding aid for individual writers and stories.

DANIEL BALDERSTON is Associate Professor of Spanish at Tulane University. A specialist on Jorge Luis Borges, he has published books and articles on him in Spanish and English, incuding The Literary Universe of Jorge Luis Borges: An Index to References and Allusions to Persons, Titles, and Places in His Writings (Greenwood, 1986). Other books, book chapters, and publications in English- and Spanish-language academic journals focus on aspects of modern Latin America fiction and poetry and the relationships between literature and history and literature and society. Dr. Balderston has also published translations of works by Jose Bianco, Silvina Ocampo, Sylvia Molloy, and Juan Carlos Onetti.