Julio Ramón Ribeyro (Book order)

Julio Ramón Ribeyro Book order

August 31, 1929 – December 4, 1994

Julio Ramón Ribeyro was a Peruvian writer best known for his short stories, which often drew from autobiographical elements. His characters typically face cruelly dashed hopes, yet his work, despite its apparent pessimism, is often comic, with humor stemming from the author's irony and the accidents befalling his protagonists. Ribeyro produced a significant body of work across genres, and his distinctive, simple yet ironic prose gives his writing a unique literary flavor.

The Word of The Speechless

264 pages
10 hours of reading

4.2(165)Add rating

Available in English for the first time, a collection of deeply humane stories depicting marginalized populations by one of the greatest South American writers of the 20th century. The Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro is one of the masters of the short story and a major contributor to the great flourishing of Latin American literature that followed the Second World War. In a letter to an editor, Ribeyro said about his stories, “in most of [them] those who are deprived of words in life find expression—the marginalized, the forgotten, those condemned to an existence without harmony and without voice. I have restored to them the breath they’ve been denied, and I’ve allowed them to modulate their own longings, outbursts, and distress.” This is work of deep humanity, imbued with a disorienting lyricism that is Ribeyro’s alone. The Word of the Speechless, edited and translated by Katherine Silver, introduces readers to an indispensable and unforgettable voice of Latin American fiction.