Moacyr Scliar, "The Dwarf in the Television Set" (trans. Eloah F. Giacomelli) (Brazil)

It’s December 16. Welcome back to the 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar—a literary globetrotting adventure featuring 25 stories from 25 different countries.

Our editor, Alberto Manguel, is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Here he is on Moacyr Scliar’s story, “The Dwarf in the Television Set”:

Moacyr Scliar was a doctor in the Brazilian South who became one of the best-loved authors in the Portuguese language. His stories give Brazilian folk-tales a modern twist, setting them in the urban landscapes of twentieth-century cities. The following story is told by a dwarf condemned to live in one of the several television sets bought by a certain Gastão who has inherited his father’s department store. Living in the set has one advantage: when the television is turned off, the dwarf can witness the peculiar goings-on in Gastão’s apartment, as if he were the audience at a private play. Scliar is at his ironic best in this fantastic marital farce.

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