Coinciding with the centenary of the birth of the writer Ana María Matute, the publishing house Destino will publish on June 18 a new edition of her book of short stories ‘Los niños tontos.’
This reprint not only recovers the work for new readers, but will also include two previously unpublished stories.
The work ‘Los niños tontos’, written at the end of the 1950s, gathers a total of 23 short stories. Of these, 21 were published at the time, while the remaining two, ‘El ahogadito’ and ‘El otro niño tonto,’ remained unpublished in the collection. ‘El ahogadito’ was a story that was suppressed by censorship in 1956. ‘El otro niño tonto’ was published in a magazine in 1953 but had never before been included in the book. The new edition will also include a prologue by María Paz Ortuño Ortín.
According to Ana María Matute herself, this book ‘is not a book for children, but about children’. The author explained that it is about children who, with an innocent and lucid look, try to understand a hostile environment. Through a prose defined as precise and evocative, Matute builds in these stories "small pictures of discovery and loss", forming a "great impressionist painting of childhood.
