Seventeen poisoned Englishmen

Title: Doce Cuentos Peregrinos (Strange Pilgrims)
Author: Gabriel García Marquez
Publication: 1992
Country: Colombia
Language: Spanish

Although this collection of short stories was finally published in 1992, Gabriel García Márquez tells us in the prologue that he started writing them almost 20 years before.
The prologue ("Why twelve, why tales, why pilgrim") is the story of how the notes he wrote for 64 stories turned into these 12 short tales after a pilgrimage from the desk to the bottom of a drawer to the thrash can, and almost constitutes another tale itself.

Essentially, this collection of the stories of random latin americans in Europe talks about loneliness, even oblivion, the lack of self-identity that people experience when they find themselves alone in a foreign country far away from home. In some of them, the narrator is also a character witnessing the story. In some others, he's outside it.
In these tales there's not much of his "magic realism" that you can identify. They are great short narrative works, in his style of narrative: clear, not aiming for beauty in the form but powerfully strong in the content.
Let me show you just one extract of his description of Rome, from "The Saint":

"After lunch Rome would succumb to its August stupor. The afternoon sun remained immobile in the middle of the sky, and in the two o'clock silence one heard nothing but water, which is the natural voice of Rome. But at about seven the windows were thrown open to summon the cool air that began to circulate, and a jubilant crowd took to the streets with no other purpose than to live, in the midst of backfiring motorcycles, the shouts of melon sellers, and love songs among the flowers on the terraces".

I can say I have a favorite, which is, by far, "Seventeen poisoned Englishmen" (though I'd have translated it as "Seventeen Englishmen poisoned"...). I don't want to spoil it for you, so I included the whole story at the end of this entry, in pdf format. Or at least I think I did. This is the first time I embed a pdf document in a blog entry, so please, be indulgent...
This story is called Seventeen poisoned Englishmen, but it could as well have been called "A corpse floating in Naples harbor" or "A miserable priest begging for a coffee in a terrace". All those things happen at some point along the story, but the story has nothing to do with them (or with the Englishmen).
It narrates the experience of Señora Prudencia Linero in Naples. We know the reason of her trip, but it doesn´t matter at all.
I really don´t want to spoil it! I think I should just let you read it, and then we can discuss, if you want ;)
Will get you intrigued with the first paragraph:

"THE FIRST THING Senora Prudencia Linero noticed when she reached the port of Naples was that it had the same smell as the port of Riohacha. She did not tell anyone, of course, since no one on that ancient ocean liner, overflowing with Italians from Buenos Aires returning to their native land for the first time since the war, would have understood. But at least it made her feel less alone, less frightened and remote, at seventy-two years of age and at a distance of eighteen days of heavy seas from her people and her home."

Enjoy!