The Illusion Seller by Gilberto Pinto

The Illusion Seller is a collection of seventeen short stories in which fantasy and reality meet and gradually become difficult to tell apart.

Against familiar Portuguese landscapes and the routines of everyday life, the unexpected quietly takes hold. Myth, suspense, memory, desire, illusion, and transformation enter ordinary lives, leading the characters to question what they see, what they believe, and how solid the world around them really is.

First published in Portugal in 2009, the collection combines literary fiction with the fantastic and the uncanny, moving through moments of tenderness, mystery, humor, and unease. Across its seventeen stories, Gilberto Pinto creates a disturbing and unpredictable world in which appearances are never entirely trustworthy and reality may itself be another form of illusion.