The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Heker, Liliana. The Stolen Party and Other Stories. Passport Books, 1994. Print.

The collection is comprised of six separate short stories. The first story, "Georgina Requeni or The Chosen One," is told in the third-person present. Georgina is six years old when the President of the Republic discovers that she is the most wonderful child in the world. He takes her to live in his palace and parades her through town so everyone can see how magnificent she is. When her mother and grandmother tease her, the President of the Republic locks them in a dungeon, and she is delighted.

Time moves forward strangely in this story, with no transition or indication that years have passed. At 13, Georgina is a dreamy young girl who imagines that she is going to be extraordinarily famous and magnificent when she grows up. She buys an exercise book to use as a diary, but she does not write anything in it until she is 14. She writes a few lines on the first page and cries because they are so fantastic. When she is 18, she looks back on the diary and realizes she only ever wrote on the first page, but she does not mind because she has decided she wants to be an actress. At 20, Georgina tells her boyfriend Manuel about her dream of becoming famous and lies to him about writing the most magnificent diary when she was a teenager.

At 24, Georgina finds herself working in a theater production as a minor character. At 31, Georgina is still working minor roles. She tells her boyfriend, Santiago, that she ought to kill herself in her prime and he leaves, breaking up with her. At 34, Georgina is still working minor roles in the theater, and she starts to lose hope that she will ever be a prodigiously talented girl. In the final scene, Georgina is at a party with a group of theater members who laugh at her and call her an “old bat.” She leaves the party, drunk, and contemplates throwing herself into the river to die, but instead she vomits into the river and decides to enjoy the day.

“Early Beginnings or Ars Poetica,” is told in the present tense by an unnamed narrator who lives alone in an apartment in Argentina. She imagines that a horse and a lion are going to somehow enter her apartment and do something sinister to her. She imagines that they will bring about the end of her life, and the end of the universe itself. She thinks back to her past and tries to imagine her beginning. She remembers a birthday party in which she sat with her family and drank hot chocolate. She cried because she was poor and other little girls in the world were princesses living in palaces. Before this, she remembers being asked to give up her white hood to her baby cousin because she had outgrown it and the baby was cold. She wanted to kill the baby, but decided to give in to her family’s request. She tries to remember something before this moment, but she is unable to do so.

“Family Life” is told from a third-person point of view in the past tense. Nicolas was described as an exceptionally rational young man. He studied math and worked at the Computer Centre. One morning, he woke up in a different dimension with a different family who thought of him as “Alfredo.” After determining that he had indeed travelled into another dimension, he decided to make the most of the situation. He planned to become Federico and study math just as he had planned to do before. He went to bed feeling optimistic, but then woke up in a third dimension where he was known as “Federico.”

“Bishop Berkeley or Mariana of the Universe” is told by a third-person narrator in the present tense. Mariana is a young girl at home alone with her older sister, Lucia. Mariana is anxious because she sometimes has visions of Lucia violently attacking her. Mariana asks Lucia when their mother is going to be home four times before Lucia, who is trying to read, becomes so annoyed that she tells Mariana she is imagining the whole world and everything in it. Mariana is terrified by her sister’s suggestions because it seems plausible to her.

“Jocasta” is told in a present tense stream-of-conscious narrative by the narrator and main character, Nora. Nora is a young mother of a small child, Daniel. Her son is obsessed with her and constantly clings to her. One afternoon, she sits with her friends in her garden. Her friends tease the boy and call him Little Oedipus. Nora, exasperated with his clinginess, gives Daniel to her friend’s daughter, Graciela, to watch. However, when she gives Daniel away, Nora begins to imagine he is going to replace her with Graciela, who she imagines him having an erotic relationship with. She takes him inside to put him to sleep, and either engages in an incestuous moment with him, or imagines it, and then goes into her own room to sleep, but she stays up all night horrified by herself.

“The Stolen Party” is told by a third-person narrator in the past tense. Nine-year-old Rosaura was the smartest girl in her class. Her mother worked as a maid for Senora Ines, who lived in a mansion with her daughter, Lucia. Every afternoon, when Rosaura’s mother cleaned the house, Rosaura did her homework at the counter with Lucia. She considered Lucia her best friend and told her all her secrets. She loved Lucia and her wonderful family, her beautiful house. When Lucia invited Rosaura to her birthday party, Rosaura was elated, especially when she learned there would be a monkey in attendance. Rosaura’s mother warned her that Lucia was not her friend, but Rosaura did not listen to her mother. She went to the party and had a wonderful time, hardly even noticing that Senora Ines kept asking her to pass out cake and serve hot dogs. When her mother came to pick her up, Rosaura expected to be given a bracelet like all the other girls who left the party. Instead, Senora Ines reached into her purse and pulled out two dollars to pay Rosaura for her services.