As Marco tells the khan about Armilla, which "has nothing that makes it seem a city, except the water pipes that rise vertically where the houses should be and spread out horizontally where the floors should be," the spider-web city of Octavia, and other marvelous burgs, it may be that he is creating them all out of his imagination, or perhaps he is recreating fine details of his native Venice over and over again, or perhaps he is simply recounting some of the myriad possible forms a city might take.

    It is the story of Tereza, the twelve-year-old girl who is sold into slavery by her aunt. It is the story of Tereza, the young woman, who is jailed for defending her lover only to find him untrue. And it is the story of Tereza, reigning goddess of love – inspiration to poets, painters, and sailors on leave; mistress of a noble patriarch; chief-of-staff to the armies of whores on strike; and triumphant Queen of the Samba – desired, admired, and honored by all.

    So begins the courtship of a certain Unguentine to the woman we know only as Mrs. Unguentine, the chronicler of their sad, fantastical tale. For forty years, they sail the seas together, alone on a giant land-covered barge of their own devising. They tend their gardens, raise a child, invent an artificial forest--all the while steering clear of civilization. Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine is a masterpiece of modern domestic life, a comic novel of closeness and difficulty, miscommunication and stubborn resolve. Rarely has a book so perfectly registered the secret solitude of marriage, how shared loneliness can result in a powerful bond.

    "The stories are rich and startling in their matter and confident in their manner....They are--the word cannot be avoided--magical."--John Updike, The New YorkerThis collection of fiction, representing some of García Márquez's earlier work, includes eleven short stories and a novella, Innocent Eréndira, in which a young girl who dreams of freedom cannot escape the reach of her vicious and avaricious grandmother."Garcí­a Márquez's fictional universe has the same staggeringly gratifying density and texture as Proust's Faubourg Saint-Germain and Joyce's Dublin....Arguably the best of the Latin Americans."--Martin Kaplan, The New Republic"It is the genius of the mature Garcí­a Márquez that fatalism and possibility somehow coexist, that dreams redeem, that there is laughter even in death.'--John Leonard, New York Times

    Selections, with English translations, from the author's "El oro de los tigres" and "La rosa profunda".

    Becoming one with the black stag is a dangerous dalliance for Jim as he finds it increasingly more difficult to return to his own life.