A Practical Guide to Levitation: Stories

Vividly translated into English for the first time by long-time Agualusa collaborator Daniel Hahn, the jewel-like tales gathered in this collection are an exuberant celebration of story-telling in all its various forms. On the sands of Itamaracá, an old fisherman dreams of fish: shad in the morning, when the water’s smooth and silvery, the Atlantic tarpon after it rains, and a jack when the sea goes blue. Elsewhere, Borges sulks away in a plantation of neverending banana tree, and the president of the United States wakes from a coma speaking only Portuguese. With “the lyrical experimentalism and unabashed weirdness of the surrealist” ( ), Agualusa offers a sly wink to the fictional quality inherent in all narratives, whether they’re fishermen’s tales, national histories, or the stories we tell ourselves.