La vida dificil or a Difficult Life by Slawomir Mrozek Book Review

La vida dificil or a Difficult Life by Slawomir Mrozek Book Review
by Teresita Blanco

La Vida Dificil or A Difficult Life is quite the interesting collection of short stories. These stories poked fun at many things including communism and the army.  A good one was about a tree. The narrator spent his time commenting on the changes in town.

The only thing that did not change was his beloved tree. One day, the town mayor sent an order to remove the tree. Thanks to the new cars, the tree had become a threat. Since the narrator did not want to get rid of his tree he found a way to deal with speeding drivers.

Whenever one came by, he would shoot a warning shot into the air to make them slow down. Needless to say, this landed him in jail. Another odd one was about scientist philosophizing about pipes as if they were humans.

The last one was about a general and monkey. This monkey story was quite bizarre. There are plenty of other stories worth mentioning. These were just a few that were particularly noteworthy due to their strange kind of humor.