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  A foreign country is the past

  Fernando Sdrigotti

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  The fifteen stories in A Foreign Country is the Past aren't glimpses into worlds, but worlds themselves. Entire lives are spun in each few pages as time reveals itself a strange fiction, everything ever present, leaking from the past into the future and back again. Sdrigotti's prose is immaculate, incisive and evocative with only the most minimal of gestures. The cumulative effect of reading these stories, which may all be in the same country, or same place, is disorienting, dazzling, and – crucially – re-orienting, as we rethink our own pasts, presents, and potential futures.
  – C.D. Rose
  
  
  At a secluded weekend home, a girl becomes entranced by the sound of the cicadas, as she grapples with the stifling summer heat, and her mother's recent death. Overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding, a young man seeks solace in a privatised cathedral, comically navigating religious bureaucracy, economic crisis, and existential angst. A journey to scatter his grandparents' ashes turns into a tragicomedy, as an unnamed man explores the changes in the city he left behind. A Foreign Country is the Past is the sensorial new collection from the acclaimed author of Jolts. Centering on identity and memory, viewed through a distinctive Argentine lens, these fifteen tales are a profound exploration of the spaces between places and the echoes of time.

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  A Madman's Diary

  Lu Xun

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  “A Madman’s Diary” is a short story by Lu Xun first published in 1918. Written in vernacular Chinese, it is considered “China’s first modern short story” and the most influential modern work in the republican era. Lu was inspired by “Diary of a Madman" by Nicolai Gogol, both in the use of the diary form and in the idea that the madman sees things more clearly than others. The story comes about when the narrator decides to visit two friends with whom he has lost touch when he learns that one of them has fallen ill. When he arrives, he is met by the brother, who informs him that his brother is no longer ill and hands him a copy of his brother’s diary. It is immediately apparent that the diarist is indeed mad. He believes he is surrounded by cannibals and that everyone has cannibalistic designs on him. His paranoia grows and he begins to see threats everywhere. He even sees  the words “Eat People” between the lines of classic Confucian texts. He eventually suspects that his late sister had been eaten by his brother, and that he himself may have unknowingly done so. He ardently hopes that everyone will have a change of heart and change their ways. The story ends with a plea to “save the children”.The story is not readily comprehensible, and it took several years for it to be recognized as important. Gradually the madman is seen as a revolutionary contemptuous of Chinese tradition and its feudal society that “eats people”, people who themselves are corrupted by traditions they cannot escape.

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  Inspiration An - From their pens...

  George Gissing

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  George Robert Gissing was born on November 22nd, 1857 in Wakefield, Yorkshire.  
  He was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield. Gissing loved school. He was enthusiastic with a thirst for learning and always diligent.  By the age of ten he was reading Dickens, a lifelong hero. 
  In 1872 Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College. Whilst there Gissing worked hard but remained solitary. Unfortunately, he had run short of funds and stole from his fellow students. He was arrested, prosecuted, found guilty, expelled and sentenced to a month's hard labour in 1876. 
  On release he decided to start over.  In September 1876 he travelled to the United States. Here he wrote short stories for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. On his return home he was ready for novels. 
  Gissing self-published his first novel but it failed to sell.  His second was acquired but never published. His writing career was static.  Something had to change.  And it did. 
  By 1884 The Unclassed was published.  Now everything he wrote was published. Both Isabel Claren-don and Demos appeared in 1886. He mined the lives of the working class as diligently as any capitalist. 
  In 1889 Gissing used the proceeds from the sale of The Nether World to go to Italy. This trip formed the basis for his 1890 work The Emancipated. 
  Gissing's works began to command higher payments. New Grub Street (1891) brought a fee of £250.  
  Short stories followed and in 1895, three novellas were published; Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. Gissing was careful to keep up with the changing attitudes of his audience.  
  Unfortunately, he was also diagnosed as suffering from emphysema. The last years of his life were spent as a semi-invalid in France but he continued to write. 1899; The Crown of Life. Our Friend the Charlatan appeared in 1901, followed two years later by The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. 
  George Robert Gissing died aged 46 on December 28th, 1903 after catching a chill on a winter walk.

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  Strychinne for Dogs - Gask was...

  Arthur Gask

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  Arthur Cecil Gask was born on 10th July 1869 in Marylebone, London. 
   
  He began his career as an author late in life.  It was only in 1920 when he and his second wife and family emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia to set up a dental practice that writing took its hold. 
   
  Gask paid for the publication of his first work, ‘The Secret of the Sandhills’, which was an immediate success, both commercially and critically.  
   
  Over the next 3 decades Gask wrote over thirty books, usually featuring his detective invention Gilbert Larose, as well as short stories.  Many of his works were translated, serialised and even broadcast on the radio.  HG Wells and Bertrand Russell were avid fans. 
   
  In the last years of his life he was still writing, usually two novels a year. 
   
  Arthur Gask died on 25th June 1951, in Adelaide, Australia.  He was 81 
   
  In this story we meet his most popular character, Detective Gilbert Larose, who, whilst on holiday, is drawn into a case of dogs being poisoned.  But why would anyone do that?

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  Medusa's Coil

  H.P. Lovecraft

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  Venture into the dark and mysterious world of H. P. Lovecraft’s Medusa's Coil, a tale that combines supernatural horror with a chilling sense of foreboding. When a man arrives at an isolated mansion, he uncovers the terrifying secrets hidden within, secrets that reveal an ancient evil lurking beneath the surface. As the story unfolds, he becomes entangled in a web of dread, deception, and doom, leading to an unforgettable climax that will haunt the listener long after the tale ends. 
  Narrated by Ken Kowalik, this audiobook captures Lovecraft’s unique blend of atmospheric suspense and cosmic horror. Kowalik’s performance brings a rich, ominous depth to the story, enhancing the eerie ambience and drawing listeners into the gripping tension of Lovecraft’s writing. 
  Perfect for fans of Lovecraftian horror, Medusa's Coil delivers a compelling journey into the uncanny and the unknown. Prepare for an audio experience filled with suspense, terror, and the dark allure of Lovecraft’s most haunting themes.

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  Nikolai Gogol - A Short Story...

  Nikolai Gogol

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  Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was born on 1st April 1809 to a father, descended from Ukrainian Cossacks and a mother with a military background in the Ukrainian town of Sorochyntsi, then part of the Russian Empire and rich in Cossack traditions and folklore.   
   
  His father wrote poetry and plays which the young Gogol helped stage at his uncle’s home theatre.  This helped ignite in him a love of literature and blossomed when he attended, what is now, the Nizhyn Gogol State University at the age of 12.  Here he participated in school theatre productions and refined his mastery of his native Ukrainian and also the Russian of his Imperial masters. 
   
  In 1828 he went to St Petersburg and unsuccessfully tried to begin a career as an actor after finding that with no money and no connections the civil service was barred to him. 
   
  Embezzling money from his mother he embarked on a trip to Germany. When the money ran out, he returned to St Petersburg but the experiences were used in a series of stories he contributed to periodicals.  These tales were steeped in his childhood memories of the Ukrainian landscape and peasantry enlivened with the supernatural of its folklore woven with realistic events of the day.  He wrote in Russian in a whimsical, colloquial style with a smattering of Ukrainian words and phrases that provided an authenticity.  Eight stories were published as ‘Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka’.  Seemingly all at once fame and fortune arrived. Gogol was hailed by his contemporaries, including Pushkin, as a pre-eminent writer of Russian literature.   
   
  His success continued with his brilliant plays ‘The Inspector General’ and the comedy ‘The Marriage for the Theatre’, both being highly acclaimed.   
   
  In 1834 he became Professor of Medieval History at the University of St. Petersburg but with little academic or teacher training, failed to adequately fulfil many of his duties and soon resigned this post.  With no obligations and using his earnings from his writing, which now included the impressionistic and immortal ‘Dead Souls’, Gogol travelled around Europe, spending the most time in Rome where he studied art, read Italian literature and developed a passion for opera.  
   
  In the 1840s Gogol became preoccupied with a need to purify his soul and embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In tandem he fell under the influence of a strict and austere spiritual ascetic who persuaded him to observe strict fasts that, allied with his depression and deteriorating health, contributed to his death on 21st April 1852 at the age of only 43. 
   
  1 - Nikolai Gogol - A Short Story Collection - An Introduction 
  2 - The Nose by Nikolai Gogol 
  3 - The Cloak by Nikolai Gogol also known as 'The Overcoat' 
  4 - Old Fashioned Landowners by Nikolai Gogol 
  5 - St Johns Eve by Nikolai Gogol 
  6 - Diary of a Madman by Nikolai Gogol

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