Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937) was born in Uruguay and is best known
for short stories he wrote during the years he lived in two remote
regions - the Chaco region that borders on Bolivia and Misiones, an
area in northern Argentina that had once belonged to the Jesuit
missions. He worked in both these rugged areas as a pioneer farmer,
battling with the fiercely hostile conditions that he later described
in his terse stories. His published collections included Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte (1917), Cuentos de la selva (1918) and Anaconda (1921).
An
acknowledged master of the short story form, Quiroga compares with
Kipling, particularly in his interest in animal protagonists, although
the stoical and unsentimental style is uniquely his own. Although he
uses some regional vocabulary, the stories are not difficult to
understand for students with a grasp of basic grammar. They provide an
excellent starting point for those who are graduating from language
learning to reading literary texts.
Short stories included:
- Nuestro primer cigarro
- La insolacion
- El alambre de pua
- Yaguai
- Anaconda
- Los fabricantes de carbon
- En la noche
- Los pescadores de vigas
- La voluntad
- El simun
- A la deriva
- El hombre muerto
- El yaciyatere
- Tacuara-Mansion