A satirical description of the effect of the establishment of a newspaper in a Spanish provincial town. An opposition journal is started to make war on the clique who are trying to keep abreast of the times. Everything that happens is indirectly caused by the paragraphs of the rival journals. "A Friendly Argument in the Café de La Marina" where the leading citizens assemble daily to discuss the news is reprinted in the library. The story is mainly...

This is a book of short stories by Armando Palacio Valdes (1853-1938), a Spanish writer well-known for his novels, which include Sister Saint Sulpice and The Fourth Estate. Although his novels were very popular in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century, Palacio Valdes's shorter pieces were never published in book form and the present volume is, in fact, the first collection of his stories in English translation. Many readers will only...