Readers who like their satire with a decidedly intellectual bent will find big laughs in The Rest Is Silence, the only novel by the Guatemalan author Augusto Monterroso (1921-2003), translated from the Spanish by Aaron Kerner. The book is a collection of writings by and about Eduardo Torres, a resident of San Blas, Mexico, who fancies himself an esteemed literary critic. Monterroso begins his portrait of this allegedly brilliant mind with a series of accounts by Torres's friends and acquaintances, who may or may not be reliable. These sources include Torres's former private secretary; Torres's brother, Luis, who claims that Torres's first word, spoken at age five, was "book"; and Torres's wife, Carmen, a patient soul who has learned "to endure his constant reading and pretensions as a ladies' man."
The bulk of this devilishly inventive fiction consists of Torres's own writings, which show with painful hilarity that he isn't as intellectual as he thinks. One doesn't have to be a book reviewer to appreciate the comedy in Torres's misunderstandings of literature, such as an essay that demonstrates his inability to grasp that Don Quixote is a parody, or an article with--how to put this?--an idiosyncratic take on the art of translation ("Would it not be preferable to avoid translation entirely, at any cost?"). And the wisdom is undeniable in such observations as "The best way to avoid death has always been to try to remain alive for as long as possible." Truer words were never written. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer