The Things We Don't Do

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 problems - these often tragicomic 'stories of ideas' vacillate between the touching and the absurd, in the best tradition of Spanish storytelling.