Dark humor pervades these 2 novellas. In The Tenant, Mario Rota,a linguistics professor twists and sprains his ankle while he is out for a run and from that moment, his life spirals out of control. He returns home to find a new tenant moving into the apartment across the hall, who turns out to be a reknown linguistics professor (just not known to him). He goes to work the next day and finds this new professor not only working at the same University, but has apparently taken 2 of his courses, been given his office and has stolen his girlfriend. As he struggles to make sense of his new reality, he is warned that he is in imminent danger of losing his job altogether if he does not publish within the next few months.

In The Motive, a part-time lawyer and aspiring writer decides to use his neighbors as inspiration. He allows himself to be seduced by the building concierge to get information on an elderly hermit and a young couple living in the apartment building. He eavesdrops on conversations by the young couple, befriends them and the elderly gentlemen, using them as characters in his new book. But before long he's not only writing about them, he's manipulating his characters in real life so they act out the plot for his book, with grim results.

Both are humorously disturbing. This author has an interesting voice. ( )

The Tenant and The Motive are two light yet darkly humorous novellas by one of Spain's leading contemporary authors, who is best known for his novel Soldiers of Salamis, the winner of the 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. In the first novella, a university professor of linguistics experiences a Kafkaesque turn of events after an ankle sprain, as a renowned (but unknown to him) fellow linguistics professor moves in next door to him, takes over his office and classes, and steals his girlfriend while he remains powerless to change his fate. In The Motive, a part-time lawyer and budding writer envisions a novel in which a young couple in financial straits murders an elderly man for his hidden money, but he has trouble putting voices to the characters. The writer befriends a couple and an old man who live in the same building as he, and, in a reversal of the concept of "life becomes art", he injects himself and alters their three lives, using taped conversations to write his story. These novellas were a joy to read, and I'll be looking for more of Cercas' works in the near future. ( )