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The Shadow of the Mammoth: Stories
A brilliant, unsettling collection of 18 stories about deception, translation, loneliness, and connection, from one of Mexico’s greatest modern writers.
Why is grass in airports so important? Can you be an extraordinary copyist without knowing how to read or write? Are there successful musicians who only play a single note in their life? Book after book, Fabio Morábito’s stories have become increasingly radical in their way of showing us that imagination is not a curious feature of the mind, but perhaps the only way to not feel excluded from the real world.
With prose free of unnecessary explanation and descriptive embellishments, The Shadow of the Mammoth insists once again on the guiding principle of Morábito’s work: playing fair with the reader, who advances in reading these stories as he did when writing them, open to any direction they could take. For this reason, these stories are as unexpected as they are different from each other, all united by that pleasure of storytelling that has always been Morábito’s unmistakable hallmark.
Why is grass in airports so important? Can you be an extraordinary copyist without knowing how to read or write? Are there successful musicians who only play a single note in their life? Book after book, Fabio Morábito’s stories have become increasingly radical in their way of showing us that imagination is not a curious feature of the mind, but perhaps the only way to not feel excluded from the real world.
With prose free of unnecessary explanation and descriptive embellishments, The Shadow of the Mammoth insists once again on the guiding principle of Morábito’s work: playing fair with the reader, who advances in reading these stories as he did when writing them, open to any direction they could take. For this reason, these stories are as unexpected as they are different from each other, all united by that pleasure of storytelling that has always been Morábito’s unmistakable hallmark.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
208 pages, Paperback
Published September 2, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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September 14, 2025I picked up a copy of Fabio Morábito's collection The Shadow of the Mammoth, translated from the Spanish by Curtis Bauer. Morábito, who was born in Egypt to Italian parents but relocated to Mexico as a teenager, is a precise writer who tends towards the microscopic and spare as can be seen in his story “The Grass at Airports.” A dynamic, multi-faceted talent.
October 13, 2025
Take your pick in 18 frigid flavors of paranoia with a surprise topping of crumbled O’Henry ‘fun size’ bars! Should the size being classified as ‘fun’ affect your enjoyment of the crushing dusting of brutal truth twists, well, maybe those taste buds aren’t your real taste friends. In fact, nothing here is as it seems once Morábito overthinks his way into your heart.
October 15, 2025
Fabio Morábito writes:
“It’s surprising to see, for example, how something as simple as making a photocopy manages to affect us when we see this action repeated five or six times. There’s the woman who places a sheet on the glass, lowers the lid, presses the start button, waits a few seconds while the scanner light sweeps over the sheet, and removes the photocopy that comes out the bottom tray. She is only one of the extras who move around the office, and once the actors enter the scene, we will hardly notice her, but now, her actions next to the photocopier, repeated over and over again in the performance prior to the shot, acquire a more profound meaning than we expected. We think: how beautiful this is, how the dead must envy us, and what wouldn’t any of them give to make a photocopy in an office, like that woman! In fact, we make a point to do the same as her a soon as the opportunity presents itself, certain that the simple act of making a photocopy, if we pay the proper attention to it, will bring us a wealth of happiness. Actually, the performances that Pencroff places in front of our eyes, made up of insignificant gestures and actions, convince us that if we always conducted ourselves like extras in a movie, taking the greatest care in everything we do, even the most insignificant things, our life would be immensely happy.”
“It’s surprising to see, for example, how something as simple as making a photocopy manages to affect us when we see this action repeated five or six times. There’s the woman who places a sheet on the glass, lowers the lid, presses the start button, waits a few seconds while the scanner light sweeps over the sheet, and removes the photocopy that comes out the bottom tray. She is only one of the extras who move around the office, and once the actors enter the scene, we will hardly notice her, but now, her actions next to the photocopier, repeated over and over again in the performance prior to the shot, acquire a more profound meaning than we expected. We think: how beautiful this is, how the dead must envy us, and what wouldn’t any of them give to make a photocopy in an office, like that woman! In fact, we make a point to do the same as her a soon as the opportunity presents itself, certain that the simple act of making a photocopy, if we pay the proper attention to it, will bring us a wealth of happiness. Actually, the performances that Pencroff places in front of our eyes, made up of insignificant gestures and actions, convince us that if we always conducted ourselves like extras in a movie, taking the greatest care in everything we do, even the most insignificant things, our life would be immensely happy.”
December 24, 2025
Some stories were better than others, all were fistfuls of sand.
January 28, 2026
A very solid collection of short fictions. Some favorites:
* Nail in the Wall: for some reason evokes Carrerre's The Moustache. I'm a sucker for this kind of idea, especially when the amount left unsaid is almost greater than what the author decides is most important. What is most important, that a thing happened, or that it's still visible and observable? Is there maybe even some kind of vulgarity to the idea that a beautiful thing should persist?
* The Great Floating Road: on its face, a parable about absolute rule, but also maybe a meditation on the inevitable failure that awaits anyone who goes it (anything) alone
* Letters to the Queen: a translator who is first hired to first convert english into italian finds himself conjuring an entire other life for his employer
* Daedalus Under Berlin: a mason assists in the construction of death trap false tunnels in the last days of World War II
* The Ravine: a family travels to the outskirts of their city to trial a new tent they've purchased next to a roadwork crew. Here starts a really strong finish to the entire collection; probably the best of the collection for me with its mix of the mundane and aching longing.
* The Ball in the Water: a man rents his family home out of necessity to summer people and struggles to maintain the not entirely honest friendship he's established with them; another really good one.
* The Shadow of the Mammoth: the tale of a man who helps a blind child at a gym intercut with words from the artist responsible for the Lascaux cave paintings; this title piece earns its honor with a setup that simultaneously makes no and perfect sense. There's a keening sense of longing here that is painfully beautiful.
* Nail in the Wall: for some reason evokes Carrerre's The Moustache. I'm a sucker for this kind of idea, especially when the amount left unsaid is almost greater than what the author decides is most important. What is most important, that a thing happened, or that it's still visible and observable? Is there maybe even some kind of vulgarity to the idea that a beautiful thing should persist?
* The Great Floating Road: on its face, a parable about absolute rule, but also maybe a meditation on the inevitable failure that awaits anyone who goes it (anything) alone
* Letters to the Queen: a translator who is first hired to first convert english into italian finds himself conjuring an entire other life for his employer
* Daedalus Under Berlin: a mason assists in the construction of death trap false tunnels in the last days of World War II
* The Ravine: a family travels to the outskirts of their city to trial a new tent they've purchased next to a roadwork crew. Here starts a really strong finish to the entire collection; probably the best of the collection for me with its mix of the mundane and aching longing.
* The Ball in the Water: a man rents his family home out of necessity to summer people and struggles to maintain the not entirely honest friendship he's established with them; another really good one.
* The Shadow of the Mammoth: the tale of a man who helps a blind child at a gym intercut with words from the artist responsible for the Lascaux cave paintings; this title piece earns its honor with a setup that simultaneously makes no and perfect sense. There's a keening sense of longing here that is painfully beautiful.
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