A Thousand Morons — Quim Monzo

"Today's best known writer in Catalan. He is also, no exaggeration, one of the world's great short-story writers." -- The Independent

A Thousand Morons, Quim Monzó's latest collection of short stories, is rife with very unfortunate characters. There's the young boy in "A Cut" who is upbraided by his teacher when he rudely shows up for class with a huge gash in his neck. And the prince in "One Night" who tries everything to awaken a sleeping princess -- yet fails completely.

Seeing that this is a Quim Monzó collection, absurdity offsets the "moronic" sadness. Such as "Love Is Eternal," which features a man who decides to finally overcome his commitment issues and marry his dying girlfriend, only to have everything backfire; or "The Fullness of Summer," in which a family meticulously records every moment of their gathering.

An excellent combination of longer, elegiac stories of "morons," aging, and the passage of time -- with short, flashier pieces that display Monzó's wit and playfulness -- make this one of the strongest collections in the oeuvre of Catalan's short fiction master.

Quim Monzó was born in Barcelona in 1952. He has been awarded the National Award, the City of Barcelona Award, the Prudenci Bertrana Award, the El Temps Award, the Lletra d'Or Prize for the best book of the year, and the Catalan Writers' Award; he has been awarded Serra d'Ormagazine's prestigious Critics' Award four times. He has also translated numerous authors into Catalan, including Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, and Ernest Hemingway.

Peter Bush is a renowned translator from Catalan, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. He was awarded the Valle-Inclán Literary Translation Prize for his translation of Juan Goytisolo's The Marx Family Saga.