num_pages: 162
description: "The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity." Finally, the "Cronopios and Famas" section delightfully characterizes, in the words of Carlos Fuentes, "those enemies of pomposity, academic rigor mortis and cardboard celebrity-a band of literary Marx Brothers."
language: English
title: Cronopios and Famas
titlecomplete: Cronopios and Famas
genres: Spanish Literature, Short Stories, Poetry, Literature, Latin American, Classics, Fantasy, Fiction, Latin American Literature, Magical Realism
ratings_count: 17303
places: Argentina
publisher: New Directions