This volume collects some of the best short fiction from the six Spanish-speaking countries of Central America - Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. Selected from stories written between 1963 and 1988, it is the only collection currently available with such broad representation of active Central American writers.

Many of the stories are quite sophisticated, dealing with middle-class concerns more often associated with the more developed countries of the world, and often utilize elements of the absurd or techniques of magical realism. In "The Circumstantial or the Ephemeral," Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso depicts the strain on a couple's relationship when the husband, a distinctly mediocre writer, wins a literary contest. "Floral Caper" by Costa Rican Carmen Naranjo depicts a man who floods his house with flowers to bolster his failed sense of self-esteem, and, in "Love Is Spelled with a G," Panamanian Rosa Maria Britton writes of a young mulatto city girl who attempts to escape the near-hopelessness of her racial and social situation by snagging an anglo U.S. military man for a husband.