A dying woman's attempt to recount the story of her life reveals the fragility of memory and the illusion of identity."Of all the words that could define her, the most accurate is, I think, ingenious."—Jorge Luis Borges"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."—Italo Calvino"Few writers have an eye for the small horrors of everyday life; fewer still see the everyday marvelous. Other than Silvina Ocampo, I cannot think of a single writer who, at any time in any language, has chronicled both with such wise and elegant humor."—Alberto Manguel"Art is the cure for death. A seminal work by an underread master. Required for all students of the human condition."—Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews"This haunting and vital final work...

An NYRB Classics OriginalThus Were Their Faces offers a comprehensive selection of the short fiction of Silvina Ocampo, undoubtedly one of the twentieth century's great masters of the story and the novella. Here are tales of doubles and impostors, angels and demons, a marble statue of a winged horse that speaks, a beautiful seer who writes the autobiography of her own death, a lapdog who records the dreams of an old woman, a suicidal romance, and much else that is incredible, mad, sublime, and delicious. Italo Calvino has written that no other writer "better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us." Jorge Luis Borges flatly declared, "Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature."Dark, gothic, fantastic, and grotesque, these haunting stories are among the world's most individual and finest.

Silvina Ocampo possessed her own special enchantment as a poet, and only now is her extraordinary poetic achievement becoming more widely recognized beyond Latin America. Remarkably, this is the first collection of Ocampo's poetry to appear in English. From her early sonnets on the native Argentine landscape, to her meditations on love's travails, to her explorations of the kinship between plant and animal realms, to her clairvoyant inquiries into history and myth and memory, readers will find the full range of Ocampo's "metaphysical lyricism" (The Independent) represented in this groundbreaking edition.