Inspired by Borges and Cortazar, and echoing Vila Matas and Zarraluki, Neuman regards both life and literature's big subjects — identity, relationships, guilt and innocence, the survival of extreme circumstances, creativity — with a quizzical, philosophical eye. From US customs houses to disillusioned poets, from Borges to a man with a tricky identity-problem — shining from the page with both irony and mortal seriousness, these often tragicomic 'stories of ideas' vacillate between the touching and the absurd, in the best tradition of Spanish storytelling. This is the first ever English collection of Andres Neuman's short fiction, containing thirty-five short stories and four sets of 'Twelve Rules for a Storyteller'.