SOURCE: "Latin American Short Fiction," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 20, No. 4, Fall, 1983, pp. 297-306.

In the following essay, Fleak provides an overview of the Latin American short story and its relationship to the novel.

The critical history of the short story is both brief and incomplete. In an article entitled "The Modern Short Story: Retrospect," H. E. Bates refers to different studies on the recent development of short fiction: "The paradoxical answer is that the history of the short story, as we know it, is not vast but brief. 'The short story proper,' says Mr. A. J. J. Ratcliff, 'that is, a deliberately fashioned work of art, and not just a straightforward tale of one or more events, belongs to modern times'; 'the short story is a young art,' says Elizabeth Bowen, 'as we know it, it is a child of this century'." [H. E...