Gardening Sale!
 
 

Special Offers see all

Enter to WIN!

Weekly drawing for $100 credit. Subscribe to our Specials newsletter for a chance to win.
Privacy Policy

More at Powell's

Recently Viewed clear list

Interviews | May 16, 2013

Jill Owens: IMG Claire Messud: The Powells.com Interview

0 comments By Jill Owens

Claire MessudClaire Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs, is fiercely intelligent and urgently intimate, written with precision, humor, and an incredible... Continue »
  1. $18.17 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

    The Woman Upstairs

    Claire Messud 9780307596901
spacer
Ships free on qualified orders.
$12.95
New Trade Paper
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
Qty Store Section
3 Burnside Literature- A to Z
24 Local Warehouse Literature- A to Z
25 Remote Warehouse Literature- A to Z

A Thousand Morons

by

A Thousand Morons Cover

ISBN13: 9781934824412
ISBN10: 1934824410
All Product Details

 

Staff Pick

A Thousand Morons is the third collection of short stories by Catalan author, journalist, and translator Quim Monzó to appear in English translation. Split into two sections, A Thousand Morons features (in addition to a most fantastic title) 19 well-crafted stories, many of which are no longer than a couple of pages. Introducing brio into the banal and fun into the funereal, Monzó is able to make an intriguing tale of even the most commonplace incidents or interactions. His often melancholy characters, possessed as they sometimes are by ruminative personalities, endure the vagaries of everyday life with reluctance and resignation. While his stories on their face may appear uncomplicated, they frequently belie the simplicity and straightforwardness of life's more prosaic moments. "I'm Looking Out of the Window," "Praise," and "The Coming of Spring" are among the strongest of the collection's longer stories and "A Cut," "One Night," "Another Night," and "Beyond the Sore" are the best of the briefer ones. A Thousand Morons is further proof that Quim Monzó is one of the more proficient, distinctive, and exciting writers at work today.
Recommended by Jeremy, Powell's City of Books

Synopses & Reviews

Review:

"The latest from Catalan author Quim Monzó (Guadalajara) is a slender yet brilliant collection of stories that subvert the expected, embrace absurdity, and add profundity to the mundane. While the lives of writers fill many of these pages — dreaming of lost friends ('Two Dreams'), shirking the advances of fellow writers ('Praise'), adding whimsy to the banal task of completing a short newspaper assignment ('Thirty Lines') — not all of Monzó's protagonists toil in the literary world. Adult children preside over elderly parents in 'Mr. Beneset' and 'The Coming of Spring.' 'One Night' finds a desperate prince striving to rouse a sleeping princess through a series of increasingly bawdy acts. And in 'Saturday,' a woman follows a meticulous routine as she slowly cleans her home of every memory it ever held, including those of herself. Split into two parts — one containing longer prose, the other, flash fiction — and beautifully translated, Monzó's 19 tales succeed so completely thanks to their curious view of the everyday. His is a world in which men become lost in existential thought while glancing out a window, where the Virgin Mary chooses to not bear a child, and where moments of hearty belly laughter are often trailed by gasps of horror." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
back to top

What Our Readers Are Saying

Add a comment for a chance to win!
Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
JohnLee, December 18, 2012 (view all comments by JohnLee)
Monzo’s strange delicacies reflect the geography and history of the city itself as much as they do the plight of contemporary humanity, full of absurdity and humor, heartbreak and despair, and in the end, full of beauty
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No
report this comment
back to top

Product Details

ISBN:
9781934824412
Author:
Monzo, Quim
Publisher:
Open Letter
Author:
Monzao, Quim
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Publication Date:
20121231
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Language:
English
back to top

Other books you might like

  1. Flotsam
    Used Hardcover $9.00
  2. Butcher's Crossing (New York Review...
    Used Trade Paper $8.00
  3. Too Much Happiness Used Trade Paper $7.50
  4. In Hazard (New York Review Books... Sale Trade Paper $7.98
  5. I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems...
    Used Hardcover $8.95
  6. Iconic Spirits: An Intoxicating History New Hardcover $16.95
back to top

Related Subjects

Fiction and Poetry » Literature » A to Z

A Thousand Morons New Trade Paper
0 stars - 0 reviews
$12.95 In Stock
Product details pages Open Letter - English 9781934824412 Reviews:
"Staff Pick" by ,

A Thousand Morons is the third collection of short stories by Catalan author, journalist, and translator Quim Monzó to appear in English translation. Split into two sections, A Thousand Morons features (in addition to a most fantastic title) 19 well-crafted stories, many of which are no longer than a couple of pages. Introducing brio into the banal and fun into the funereal, Monzó is able to make an intriguing tale of even the most commonplace incidents or interactions. His often melancholy characters, possessed as they sometimes are by ruminative personalities, endure the vagaries of everyday life with reluctance and resignation. While his stories on their face may appear uncomplicated, they frequently belie the simplicity and straightforwardness of life's more prosaic moments. "I'm Looking Out of the Window," "Praise," and "The Coming of Spring" are among the strongest of the collection's longer stories and "A Cut," "One Night," "Another Night," and "Beyond the Sore" are the best of the briefer ones. A Thousand Morons is further proof that Quim Monzó is one of the more proficient, distinctive, and exciting writers at work today.

by Jeremy
"Publishers Weekly Review" by , "The latest from Catalan author Quim Monzó (Guadalajara) is a slender yet brilliant collection of stories that subvert the expected, embrace absurdity, and add profundity to the mundane. While the lives of writers fill many of these pages — dreaming of lost friends ('Two Dreams'), shirking the advances of fellow writers ('Praise'), adding whimsy to the banal task of completing a short newspaper assignment ('Thirty Lines') — not all of Monzó's protagonists toil in the literary world. Adult children preside over elderly parents in 'Mr. Beneset' and 'The Coming of Spring.' 'One Night' finds a desperate prince striving to rouse a sleeping princess through a series of increasingly bawdy acts. And in 'Saturday,' a woman follows a meticulous routine as she slowly cleans her home of every memory it ever held, including those of herself. Split into two parts — one containing longer prose, the other, flash fiction — and beautifully translated, Monzó's 19 tales succeed so completely thanks to their curious view of the everyday. His is a world in which men become lost in existential thought while glancing out a window, where the Virgin Mary chooses to not bear a child, and where moments of hearty belly laughter are often trailed by gasps of horror." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
spacer
spacer
  • back to top
Follow us on...




Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.