Liliana Heker, "The Night of the Comet" (trans. Alberto Manguel) (Argentina)

It’s December 8. 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 Liliana Heker’s story, “The Night of the Comet”:

Borges defined the pleasure we experience in reading a story as the imminence of a revelation that does not take place. Liliana Heker, one of the foremost short-story writers of her generation, depicts the moment in which an entire city lies waiting for the event, in this case the passing of a comet. Nothing obvious happens, but we, the readers, fill the suspenseful tension with all kinds of suspicions and forebodings. Heker is deft in chronicling the events of everyday. Her stories deal with middle-class families, sibling rivalry, the trials and tribulations of marriage, and rarely look for the extraordinary when the ordinary can suffice to surprise us.

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What did you think of today's story? Use the hashtag #ssac2021 on Twitter and Instagram to check in with your fellow advent calendarians. And check back tomorrow for commentary on the next story!