BDT: Asalto en la noche y Los robinses

"Asalto en la noche" is another story (like "Conciliar el sueño") that struck me as vaguely Borgesian, though I won't reveal which story it reminded me of. A woman finds a burglar in her house and reacts fairly nonchalantly. A good deal of it is told through the dialogue between the woman and the burglar. There are a couple of twists in the story, which I won't get into. Funny, surprising, a little off kilter--a good story.

"Los robinses" has a premise that feels like the punchline to a joke. Five people, all of different nationalities, are shipwrecked on an island. The brief story doesn't dwell so much on the mechanics of survival, though there is a bit of that, as the relations between all the characters. (For one they give up on clothes.) Yet it is the nature of these evolving relationships that lead to a certain tragedy.