Scent of Buenos Aires

"By one of Argentina's greatest contemporary storytellers, The Scent of Buenos Aires gathers twenty-five of Hebe Uhart's most remarkable and incandescent short stories in English for the first time. It draws together her best vignettes of quotidian life: moments at the zoo, the hair salon, or a cacophonous homeowners association meeting. She writes in unconventional, understated syntax, constructing a delightfully specific perspective on life in South America. These stories are marked by sharp humor and wit: discrete and subtle, yet filled with eccentric and insightful characters. Uhart's narrators pose endearing questions about their lives and environments - one asks 'Bees - do you know how industrious they are?' while another inquires, 'Are we perhaps going to hell in a hand basket?' Hebe Uhart's world is dappled by iridescent ivy and conversations with animals. She pays attention to the way real people speak, attune to how characters move when they walk, or how they remain still. The result is an intimate, peculiar portrait of the always strange minutiae of these personalities"--