Piano Stories
SynopsisPlot
Piano Stories presents fifteen wonderful works by the great Uruguayan author Felisberto Hernández, “a writer like no other,” as Italo Calvino declares in his introduction: “like no European or Latin American. He is an ‘irregular,’ who eludes all classifications and labelings ― yet he is unmistakable on any page to which one might randomly open one of his books.” Piano Stories contains classic tales such as “The Daisy Dolls,” “The Usher,” and “The Flooded House.”
Story
About this book
Felisberto Hernández was a Uruguayan writer who spent much of his early life as a traveling pianist, performing in small towns across Uruguay and Argentina. That musical background shaped his fiction in visible ways, lending it an attention to rhythm, sensation, and the odd textures of memory. Piano Stories collects fifteen of his short works, including pieces such as The Daisy Dolls, The Usher, and The Flooded House. Italo Calvino wrote an introduction to the collection, describing Hernández as a writer who fits no easy category, whether European or Latin American.
The stories tend to move by association rather than conventional plot. Objects, rooms, and physical sensations often carry as much weight as characters do, and everyday settings can shift into something stranger without warning. Hernández had a persistent interest in the gap between what people perceive and what they understand, and his narrators frequently find themselves caught in that gap.
Hernández published during his lifetime but remained little known outside Uruguay and Argentina until translations brought his work to wider attention. This English-language edition, introduced by Calvino, gathers pieces that span different periods of his writing career and gives a broad view of his distinctive style.
