Word of the Speechless

by Julio Ramón Ribeyro

"The Peruvian writer Julio Ramo n Ribeyro is one of the masters of the short story and a major contributor to the great flourishing of Latin American literature that followed the Second World War. In a letter to an editor, Ribeyro said about his stories, 'in most of [them] those who are deprived of words in life find expression-- the marginalized, the forgotten, those condemned to an existence without harmony and without voice. I have restored to them the breath they've been denied, and I've allowed them to modulate their own longings, outbursts, and distress.' This is work of deep...