{"product_id":"the-rest-is-silence-9781681378824","title":"The Rest Is Silence","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe lone novel by a Latin American author of very short fiction (praised as \"the most beautiful stories in the world\" by Italo Calvino)--an antic, metafictional send-up of the Mexican literary scene told through the unreliable recollections of an aging critic's friends, relatives, and attendants.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe one and only novel by the renowned Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso--Latin America's most expansive miniaturist, whose tiny, acid, and bracingly surreal narratives Italo Calvino dubbed \"the most beautiful stories in the world\"--\u003ci\u003eThe Rest Is Silence \u003c\/i\u003epresents the reader with the kaleidoscopic portrait of a provincial Mexican literary critic, one Eduardo Torres, a sort of Don Quixote of the Sunday supplements, whose colossal misreadings are matched only by the scale of his vanity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePresented in the form of a festschrift for the aging writer, this rollicking metafiction offers up a bouquet of highly unreliable reminiscences by Torres's friends, relations, and servants (their accounts skewed by envy, ignorance, and sheer malice), along with a generous selection of the savant's own comically botched attempts at \"criticism.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMonterroso's narrative is a ludicrous dissection of literary self-conceit, a (Groucho) Marxian skewering of the Mexican literary landscape, and perhaps a wry self-portrait by an author who is profoundly sensible of just how high the stakes of the art of criticism really are--and, consequently, of just how far it has to fall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e New York Review of Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/10\/2024\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781681378824\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 176\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.81lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e 10\/07\/2024\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Augusto Monterroso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44723254165685,"sku":"9781681378824","price":14.41,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_99949a74-4e53-45db-b23b-e6ca0a743be4.jpg?v=1729007252","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/the-rest-is-silence-9781681378824","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}