5 h 33 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 5 h 33 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
A bed, a river, a family quarrel: how quickly can ordinary life become a source of dread?
In Tales of Love, Madness, and Death, Horacio Quiroga brings fear into homes where love offers little shelter. In The Feather Pillow, a young bride grows ill beside a reserved husband. In The Decapitated Chicken, disability, resentment, and unequal affection strain a household. Familiar rooms become places of unease.
Beyond the home, the forests and rivers of northeastern Argentina hold dangers of their own. In Adrift, a snakebitten man travels along a river as poison threatens his life. Wild Honey follows a visitor who understands too little of the forest, while Sunstroke gives dogs a sense of danger their master does not share.
What you’ll discover
- A home without comfort Enter The Feather Pillow, where a bride’s illness makes the quiet house increasingly frightening.
- Affection under strain Face the resentment and unequal love that make The Decapitated Chicken a disturbing family story.
- A river against time Follow Adrift’s journey, where the threat of poison turns a river into a desperate route.
- The forest’s real dangers Step into Wild Honey alongside a visitor whose limited understanding leaves him exposed.
- Danger beyond human sight Meet the dogs of Sunstroke, alert to a threat their master does not fully grasp.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy dark, vivid short stories, jealousy and obsession, jungle and river settings, animals that think, and tales that reach their point in a few pages.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A boy's first passion meets family pride
- Old loves return as scenes that cannot be undone
- A jeweler's patience can be cruelly tested
- Addiction builds a private hell for the user
- Home can become the most frightening place
- Nature and fear close in on one lonely person
- Animals notice what their masters cannot
- Poor workers and dogs pay for survival
- Comic stories still carry a sting
- The strangest love story is told by its victim
Who’s who
- NébelA romantic young man from Concordia whose first passion at eighteen brings him a hard lesson in family pride and pity.
- LidiaThe young woman at the center of Nébel's story, shaped by a mother who wants a respectable place in society.
- KassimA quiet, gifted jeweler who works through the night for a wife who wants the stones he sets.
- AliciaA shy bride in a cold white house, who grows weaker each night from an illness doctors cannot name.
- CayéA lumber-camp worker who squanders his advance in Posadas and then dreams only of escaping his debts.
- YaguaíA proud fox terrier from Buenos Aires who hunts lizards in Misiones and learns hunger in a drought.
- Carlos DuránAn engineer who is called to a sick woman's bedside and must decide what he feels when she recovers.
- María Elvira FunesA beautiful young woman, ill with fever, who calls for a man she hardly knows and later forgets why.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet or computer, once the book texts are online.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, once the book texts are online.
- Audiobook
- Read by Lucas Linden, complete. It opens once the recording is online.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 14 minutes, to read today.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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Erzählungen von Liebe, Wahnsinn und Tod
by Horacio Quiroga · 1917
A gravedigger kneels by a skeleton and hears a tiny voice inside the skull begging for cocaine.
Medium level2–5 hours to readDeutsch
Learn a language with medium classicsSpanischFranzösischDeutschItalienischJapanischPortugiesischEnglischHow we measure levels
Excellent
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In short
Picture a gravedigger, drunk on chloroform, kneeling at an open coffin in the moonlight. Inside a skeleton's skull, a tiny shivering man begs him for cocaine.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A boy's first passion meets family pride
A Season of Love is told in four seasons. Spring opens at a Carnival parade in Concordia. Nébel, eighteen and home from Buenos Aires, throws streamers at a carriage and falls headlong for Lidia, a girl of fourteen who rides with her mother and a doctor.
In summer he returns, and Lidia's mother welcomes him warmly, though she is a morphine user with a doubtful name in town. Nébel dreams of marriage. His father answers with a blunt warning about the household and where its money comes from. The mother wants his father at the wedding table, because his presence would buy her the respect the town denies her. When he refuses, old insults blow open, and Nébel nearly loses all hope.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1917
- Language
- Deutsch
- Reading time
- 3 h 35 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Quiroga, Horacio. Tales of Love, Madness, and Death. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-love-madness-and-death.
Quiroga, H. (2026). Tales of love, madness, and death. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-love-madness-and-death (Original work published 1917)
Quiroga, Horacio. Tales of Love, Madness, and Death. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-love-madness-and-death.
@book{quiroga2026tales,
author = {Quiroga, Horacio},
title = {Tales of Love, Madness, and Death},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/tales-of-love-madness-and-death},
note = {First published 1917}
}
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What is Tales of Love, Madness, and Death about?
It is a collection of eighteen short stories by Horacio Quiroga. They deal with jealous love, obsession, disease, and the dangers of the jungle, often ending in death, though a few end gently.
Who wrote Tales of Love, Madness, and Death and when?
Horacio Quiroga, a Uruguayan writer who lived in Argentina and in Misiones, wrote these stories in the early twentieth century. They first appeared in magazines and were later gathered in a volume.
Are the stories in this book connected?
They are separate tales, but they share themes of passion, fear, and fate. Many are set in Buenos Aires, Uruguay, or the Misiones jungle, and several are told by narrators who confess or look back.
The author
Horacio Quiroga
1878–1937 · Uruguayan short story writer
Horacio Quiroga (1878–1937) was a Uruguayan writer of short stories, poetry, and plays. He was born in Salto, Uruguay, and lived in Uruguay and Argentina, including Misiones and Buenos Aires. His collection Tales of Love, Madness, and Death appeared in 1917. He died in Buenos Aires in 1937.
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