The Prophet of Zongo Street - Stories

Mohammed Naseehu Ali

Summary

A dazzling collection of stories, The Prophet of Zongo Street takes readers to a world that seamlessly blends African folklore and myths with modernity. Set primarily on Zongo Street, a fictitious community in West Africa, the stories -- which are reminiscent of the works of Ben Okri and Amos Tutuola -- introduce us to wonderfully quirky characters and the most uproarious, poignant, and rawest moments of life. There's Kumi, the enigmatic title character who teaches a young boy to finally ask questions of his traditions. And as Ali moves his characters to America we meet Felix, who struggles with America's love of the exotic in "Rachmaninov."The Prophet of Zongo Street heralds a new voice and showcases Mohammed Naseehu Ali's extraordinary ability to craft stories that are both allegorical and unforgettable.

Available since: 01/23/2009.

Print length: 224 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds - A...

Agatha Christie

Hercule Poirot is about to tuck into a very traditional English supper with his old friend Bonnington when a lone diner sparks his interest. Like clockwork, the man has eaten at the restaurant on Thursdays and Tuesdays for the last ten years, but no one on the staff knows his name. When “Old Father Time,” as they have fondly nicknamed him, suddenly stops coming, Poirot believes that he might have picked up the one essential clue that could shed light on this mysterious man. Could what Old Father Time ordered as his final meal provide the key?

Show book

Top 10 Short Stories The -...

Rudyard Kipling

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. A few pages can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere.

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author?

The theme itself will form the boundaries for our stories which range from well-known classics, newly told, to stories that modern times have overlooked but perfectly exemplify the theme. Throughout the volume our authors whether of instant recognition or new to you are all leviathans of literature.

Some you may disagree with but they will get you thinking; about our choices and about those you would have made. If this volume takes you on a path to discover more of these miniature masterpieces then we have all gained something.

Kipling in these more modern times is increasingly seen as an apologist for the bad ways of evil empires. It’s a simplistic analysis and avoids much of his literary talent that is entertaining, scary and down right brilliant story telling whatever the background it is based on or comes from.

01 - Top 10 - Rudyard Kipling - An Introduction
02 - The Man Who Would Be King - Part 1
03 - The Man Who Would Be King - Part 2
04 - They
05 - The Phantom Rickshaw
06 - My Own True Ghost Story
07 - Mark of the Beast
08 - Baa Baa Black Sheep
09 - The Maltese Cat
10 - Mary Postgate
11 - The Gardener
12 -At the End of the Passage

Show book

Moby-Dick

Herman Melville

"Moby-Dick; or, The Whale" is a novel by American writer Herman Melville, published in 1851 during the period of the American Renaissance. Sailor Ishmael tells the story of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaler Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the white whale which on an earlier voyage destroyed his ship and severed his leg at the knee. The novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, but during the 20th century its reputation as a Great American Novel was established.
 
William Faulkner confessed he wished he had written it himself, and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world," and "the greatest book of the sea ever written." "Call me Ishmael" is among world literature's most famous opening sentences. The product of a year and a half of writing, the book draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible.
 
The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides.

Show book

The Rumble of Heat Lightning...

A. J. Payler

A mysterious figure stalks the murky backwoods of the Midwest on an unrelenting mission for revenge, with nothing but a Bowie knife to protect him against the monsters that haunt the forest. And even if he's able to find what he needs… it's already too late. 
  
From A. J. Payler, author of The Killing Song, Lost In the Red, and Bank Error in Your Favor comes The Rumble of Heat Lightning Above the Deep Midwestern Woods—a story of the world we live in and what people will let themselves do, just to survive in it.

Show book

The Peace Process - A Novella...

Bruce Jay Friedman

A brilliant new collection from one of American literature’s most original and hilarious purveyors of dark comedy Silenced by the horrors of Nazi Germany, a Jewish satirist is inspired to write again by his biggest fan: Joseph Goebbels. A retired English teacher dies on the operating table and wakes up to an afterlife in which literature does not exist; he can claim any masterpiece as his own, from The Catcher in the Rye to Crime and Punishment—if only he can remember what actually happens in those stories. On his first trip to the Holy Land, a down-on-his-luck filmmaker reluctantly agrees to help a young Israeli Arab escape to New York, only to watch in dismay as the upstart lands a buxom, Yiddish-speaking girlfriend and a monster movie deal.   Mario Puzo once said that the world of Bruce Jay Friedman’s short fiction is “like a Twilight Zone with Charlie Chaplin.” Ironic, clever, perceptive, and hysterical, The Peace Process is vintage Friedman—fourteen finely crafted tales that take dead aim at the sweet spot between pleasure and pain.

Show book

Things to Do When You're Goth in...

Chavisa Woods

The eight stories in Things to Do When You're Goth in the Country paint a vivid image of people who don't do what you might expect them to living on the fringes in America. Not stories of triumph over adversity but something completely other.Described in language that is brilliantly sardonic, Woods' characters return repeatedly to places where they don't belong — often the places where they were born. In "Zombie", a coming-of-age story like no other, two young girls find friendship with a mysterious woman in the local cemetery. "Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street" describes a lesbian couple trying to repair their relationship by dropping acid at a Mensa party. In "A New Mohawk", a man in romantic pursuit of a female political activist becomes inadvertently much more familiar with the Palestine/Israel conflict than anyone would have thought possible. And in the title story, Woods brings us into the mind of a queer goth teenager who faces ostracism from her small-town evangelical church.In the background are the endless American wars and occupations and too many early deaths of friends and family. This is fiction that is fresh and of the moment, even as it is timeless.

Show book