A luminous collection of dryly humorous stories that revel in the surreal and fantastic, from the pen of José Eduardo Agualusa, winner of the International Dublin Literary Award

Perfect for readers of Haruki Murakami, Julio Cortázar, and Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift

Vividly translated into English for the first time by long-time Agualusa collaborator Daniel Hahn, the jewel-like tales gathered in this collection are an exuberant celebration of story-telling in all its various forms.

On the sands of Itamaracá, an old fisherman dreams of fish: shad in the morning, when the water’s smooth and silvery, the Atlantic tarpon after it rains, and a jack when the sea goes blue. Elsewhere, Borges sulks away in a plantation of neverending banana tree, and the president of the United States wakes from a coma speaking only Portuguese.

With “the lyrical experimentalism and unabashed weirdness of the surrealist” (The Arts Desk), Agualusa offers a sly wink to the fictional quality inherent in all narratives, whether they’re fishermen’s tales, national histories, or the stories we tell ourselves.