Selected Stories

As might be expected from this master of modern Latin American literature, the 15 gems in this sparkling collection meld irony with romantic passion and reality with fantastic invention. In these stories, dating from 1959 to 1986 and grouped according to ``The Labyrinth of Love'' and ``Adverse Miracles,'' such themes as frustrated love, transfigured dreams and warped space-time become grist for the author's uniquely creative mill. The best pieces combine the wry irony of de Maupassant with the ingenious imagination of H.G. Wells: in ``About the Shape of the World,'' for example, a law student becomes entangled in a smuggling operation where a miraculous tunnel reduces the distance between Argentina and Uruguay to a four-minute walk. ``The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice'' recounts the transformation of the Buenos Aires Jockey Club into a dreamlike labyrinth to the underworld. Other stories present a surreal amalgam of love and dreams, such as ``Souvenir from the Mountains,'' in which a would-be seducer's idealized love is suddenly debauched in a hallucinatory nightmare, and ``Trio,'' a grouping of three vignettes that twist thwarted romance into obsession and madness. (Oct.)