The eight novellas collected in this book display the humor, exuberant spirit, love of language, and insight of the Spanish writer Ramon Gomez de la Serna, a central figure in the European and Latin American avant-garde, and a key contributor of Anglo-American imagism to Spanish literature. Father of the prose and poetry of the -Generation of '27-, Gomez de la Serna was admired by T.S. Eliot, Macedonio Fernandez, Oliverio Girondo, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Alfonso Reyes, and was a source of inspiration for Borges, Garcia Marquez, Cortazar, and Pizarnik. These novellas, with their humorous and witty exaggerations of everyday human foibles, their simple story lines and often-surprising endings, are presented here in the original Spanish with a clear English translation on facing pages. This book will be useful in intermediate and advanced Spanish classes and in translation courses."