The eight novellas collected in this book display the humor, exuberant spirit, love of language, and insight of the Spanish writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna, a central figure in the European and Latin American avant-garde, and a key contributor of Anglo-American imagism to Spanish literature. Father of the prose and poetry of the «Generation of '27», Gómez de la Serna was admired by T.S. Eliot, Macedonio Fernández, Oliverio Girondo, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Alfonso Reyes, and was a source of inspiration for Borges, García Márquez, Cortázar, and Pizarnik. These novellas, with their humorous and witty exaggerations of everyday human foibles, their simple story lines and often-surprising endings, are presented here in the original Spanish with a clear English translation on facing pages. This book will be useful in intermediate and advanced Spanish classes and in translation courses. The eight novellas collected in this book display the humor, exuberant spirit, love of language, and insight of the Spanish writer Ramón Gómez de la Serna, a central figure in the European and Latin American avant-garde, and a key contributor of Anglo-American imagism to Spanish literature. Father of the prose and poetry of the «Generation of '27», Gómez de la Serna was admired by T.S. Eliot, Macedonio Fernández, Oliverio Girondo, Octavio Paz, Pablo Neruda, Alfonso Reyes, and was a source of inspiration for Borges, García Márquez, Cortázar, and Pizarnik. These novellas, with their humorous and witty exaggerations of everyday human foibles, their simple story lines and often-surprising endings, are presented here in the original Spanish with a clear English translation on facing pages. This book will be useful in intermediate and advanced Spanish classes and in translation courses. Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1(10) Notes 11(1) List of novellas translated into English in this text 11(2) A note on the Spanish texts 13(2) Se presentó el higado Knock, Knock, I'm Your Liver 15(24) El hombre de la galeria The Man in the Galleria 39(22) El gran griposo The Flumaster 61(28) Aventuras de un sinsombrerista The Trials and Tribulations of the Hater of Hats 89(30) Ella+Ella-El+El She+She-He+He 119(34) El cólera azul The Blue Cholera 153(34) ¡Hay que matar el Morse! Kill the Morse! 187(40) El dueño del átomo The Master of the Atom 227(32) Works Cited and Consulted 259