The Stories Books Tell

A chair race crosses a workshop. An old perfume comes back into circulation. An aquarium forces three people to cross an island far more slowly than they intended.

Amid encounters, rivalries and miscalculated desires, the readers in these twenty stories discover new uses for what they have read, including ways to complicate their own lives. A book can change a question, make a lie harder or leave two people without the answer they expected.

In The Stories Books Tell, Paulo Ehms brings together twenty independent narratives about the encounters between reading and life. Brief introductions present the works that take part in these experiences; the sources at the end allow readers to continue their research.

With forty narrative illustrations and four original interludes, the volume follows desires, rivalries and choices that extend beyond the last page. No knowledge of the books mentioned is needed to follow the stories.