The Key to Reality

This masterful collection, the only volume of short fiction from Jewish Romanian poet and essayist Voronca (1903-1946), first published in 1944, makes its English-language debut in an expert translation from Boswell. With dazzling variety and philosophical weight, these 17 avant-garde stories prove both memorable and entertaining. The title tale, told in Voronca’s uniquely delicate prose, transitions from a sweeping account of the temporality of youth, to a probing rumination on existence, to a vivid depiction of life in poverty and sets the tone for the collection. Other standouts include the haunting “The Woman and Her Double,” about a man who creates sartorial fineries for a woman who exists in duplicate both in his mind and in reality, and “Colours,” centered on a merchant who sells colors to a gloomy town immersed entirely in gray. Voronca’s tales are both beautifully rendered (“Arriving one morning at a town’s gates when the street sweepers are throwing the remains of the night into the gutter, when the shops are greeting each other with the hoarse and sleepy voice of their iron drapes, when you want to lie down, if only on a carpet of grass to stop the peaceful waters of darkness leaving”) and wildly original. This is a gem. (Mar.)