Introduction

This isn’t a scandalous selection, but outrage was my jumping off point for this personal anthology. I’m an editor at a publisher that produces textbooks for Spanish teens learning English. Because of our demographic, each time a famous person is mentioned in one of the books, part of the editorial process now includes searching the person’s name + ‘scandal’. Just to be sure.

This crossed my mind when thinking of which short stories to include here; should I employ the same editorial process as I do at work? I asked myself. And perhaps also because the first author that came to mind (literally, he appeared there without me actually having to think) was Vladimir Nabokov.