The Best Short Story Ever
English

The Best Short Story Ever

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reading
literature
community

The title is absurd, but it works as a sort of bait. Baits like this one are normally used in social media in order to reap interactions. Sometimes (check the blue round badge besides the avatars) more interactions mean accrued income for the owner of the account who, so to speak, pulls the bait.

I think the bait that I have in mind was an innocent one—as a matter of fact, now I notice the woman who asks the question has no badge. Her post ran along the lines of the typical Twitter question: "¿Me dejan el mejor cuento que leyeron en su vida? Intenten obviar a Borges porque ya me los leí todos. / Please share here the best short story you read in your life. Just try not to mention Borges' short stories—I know them all."

As usual, before such questions, you feel an overwhelming impulse to answer (which I did), but also the desire to skim the thread to discover titles you haven't read yet, or either some others you haven't even heard of. In literary and cinematic terms, I have to admit Twitter works fairly well introducing you to new works and authors. You just have to follow the right people.

In this case, I couldn't help noticing many people in the answers were mentioning "La casa de azúcar", by Silvina Ocampo. I must have it somewhere, but for the sake of immediacy, I made a search on the web and read it right away, and it's really great (link); with its eerie atmosphere and subtle shifts in a woman's behavior we learn through the perhaps somewhat hallucinated eyes of her husband, it reminded me of Dormir al sol, a novel by Bioy Casares that left quite a mark on me when I was young. I think Silvina and Bioy shared a similar frame of mind, and they must have had a mutual influence on each other.

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