Description

This is a rare first edition of short stories, originally written in Esperanto language, by a British-Swiss Italian author Reto Rossetti (1909-1994). Rossetti learned Esperanto in 1928 and started publishing in 1930s. After WWII he was active as a writer and editor or active member of numerous Esperanto magazines. El la maniko is Rossetti’s famous collection of short stories.

Rossetti’s short stories are most often cketches, momentary encapsulation of occurrences without significant development of the theme. Their surprise factor lies in the expressiveness of his language and his fluent and outstandingly elegant, unpretentious style (Geoffrey Sutton, Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto, 2008, p. 155). 

The Esperanto publishing house Stafeto was run by Juan Régulo Pérez in La Laguna, Tenerife Island, between 1952 and 1975, when they publshed 93 books. 

The book was printed in only 1000 examples. We could only find one example of the book in libraries worldwide (Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Frankfurt a. Main, Germany). The second edition of the work followed in 1984.

References: Geoffrey Sutton, Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto, 2008, pp. 153-157.