Horacio Quiroga (b. Uruguay 1879; d. Argentina 1937), hailed by many as Latin America's first modern short story writer, was influenced in his early years by the work of Edgar Allan Poe and later governed by journalistic dictates. Quiroga forged his own poetics of the short story, creating tightly condensed tales with memorably impactful endings. Tragedies in his childhood and youth, and his experiences living in Argentina's frontier territories of El Chaco and Misiones perhaps led him naturally to one of his major themes: death. In the twelve tales chosen for this collection, death plays both a major and a minor role. In addition to death, however, the tales in this collection also highlight the broader thematic categories Quiroga explored throughout his career, such as tales of unhappy domestic life and an animal story presumably written for children.

This book is number 14 in Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monograph's critical translation series.