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  Top 10 Short Stories The - The...

  Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alphonse...

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  The Top 10 – The French – An Introduction 
   
  Among the glories of French culture are the abundance of its literary talents.  Within its rich historical legacy are authors who take the landscape of life and create very telling stories.  This conflict between history and life summons ideas of strength, beauty, brutality, elegance and all manner of feelings and emotions in these miniature gems. 
   
  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.

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  The Portal in the Pyramid - Male...

  Martin Lundqvist

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  Martin was on holiday in Cairo, Egypt, where he checked in to a cheap and dingy 3-star hotel room. He walked around in the city looking inspirations for his new Sci-Fi book when he stumbled across an Egyptian old market/bazaar. He bought a shimmering and glowing blue crystal, which turned out to be an ancient gem that led to a portal to another dimension.

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  Typhoon and Other Stories

  Joseph Conrad

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  In these four stories, written between 1900 and 1902, Joseph Conrad bid gradual farewell to his adventurous life at sea and began to confront the more daunting complexities of life on land in the twentieth century. In 'Typhoon' Conrad reveals, in the steadfast courage of an undemonstrative captain and the imaginative readiness of his young first mate, the differences between instinct and intelligence in a partnership vital to human survival. 'Falk', the companion sea-story, contrasts, as Conrad once put it, 'common sentimentalism with the frank standpoint of a more or less primitive man', a man with a conscience, however, about the girl he desires. In one of the 'land-stories' Conrad explores the utter isolation of an East European emigrant in England; in the other, the plight of a woman ironically trapped by the unwitting alliance of two retired widowers - each blind in his own way.

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  Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused...

  Howard Goldblatt

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  Stories by Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan, Booker Prize winner Su Tong, and more: “Takes readers into worlds the Chinese government has long tried to hide.”—The Washington Post Book World 
   
  “In contrast to the utopian official literature of Communist China, the stories in this wide-ranging collection marshal wry humor, entangled sex, urban alienation, nasty village politics and frequent violence…’The Brothers Shu,’ by Su Tong (Raise the Red Lantern), is an urban tale of young lust and sibling rivalry in a sordid neighborhood around the ironically named Fragrant Cedar Street. That story’s earthiness is matched by Wang Xiangfu’s folksy ‘Fritter Hollow Chronicles,’ about peasants' vendettas and local politics, and by ‘The Cure,’ by Mo Yan (Red Sorghum; The Garlic Ballads), which details the fringe benefits of an execution. Personal alienation and disaffection are as likely to appear in stories with rural settings (Li Rui’s ‘Sham Marriage’) as they are to poison the lives of urban characters (Chen Cun’s ‘Footsteps on the Roof’). Comedy takes an elegant and elaborate form in ‘A String of Choices,’ Wang Meng’s tale of a toothache cure, and it assumes the burlesque of small-town propaganda fodder in Li Xiao’s ‘Grass on the Rooftop.’”—Publishers Weekly  
   
  “Fiction that reflects the turmoil brought about by Tiananmen and the money-making ethic found in China today.”—Library Journal 
   
    
   
  Includes contributions by Shi Tiesheng, Hong Ying, Su Tong, Wang Meng, Li Rui, Duo Duo, Chen Ran, Li Xiao, Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Ai Bei, Cao Naiqian, Can Xue, Bi Feiyu, Yang Zhengguang, Ge Fei, Chen Cun, Chi Li, Kong Jiesheng, Wang Xiangfu

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  Short Stories of Padraig Pearse:...

  Patrick Pearse

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  Pádraic Pearse, who played a prominent part in the 1916 rebellion, declared Ireland a Republic from the steps of the General Post Office in Dublin. He was executed, along with the other leaders, for his part in the Rising. But he was a gentle warrior at heart. These five stories show us that Pearse was a man of deep understanding with immense human awareness of the way of life of the average person. He analyses the sorrows and joys of the Irish people of his time, and writes of the tragedies of life and death from which they could never escape.

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  Oscar Wilde - Chapter & Verse -...

  Oscar Wilde

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  Literature is a world of words and wonder, able to take us on almost unimaginable journeys from the wild and fantastic to the grind and minutiae of life. 
   
  An author’s ideas are his building blocks, his architecture of the mind, building a structure on which all else will rest; the narrative, the characters, the words - those few words that begin the adventure. 
   
  In this series we look at some of our leading classic authors across two genres: the short story and the poem.  In this modern world there is an insatiable need to categorise and pigeon-hole everyone and everything.  But ideas, these grains and saplings of the brain, need to roam, to explore and find their perfect literary use vehicle.  Our authors are masters of many literary forms, perhaps known for one but themselves favouring another. 
   
  Story. Poems. Story.  Within these boundaries come all manner of invention and cast of characters.  And, of course, each author has their own way of revealing their own chapter and verse.    
   
  1 - Chapter & Verse - Oscar Wilde 
  2 - The Devoted Friend by Oscar Wilde 
  3 - The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde 
  4 - Sonnet to Liberty by Oscar Wilde 
  5 - Sonnet on Approaching Italy by Oscar Wilde 
  6 - Easter Day by Oscar Wilde 
  7 - Helas! by Oscar Wilde 
  8 - Serenade by Oscar Wilde 
  9 - Endymon by Oscar Wilde 
  10 - Her Voice by Oscar Wilde 
  11 - Impression du Matin by Oscar Wilde 
  12 - Requescat by Oscar Wilde 
  13 - A Vision by Oscar Wilde 
  14 - The Grave of Shelley by Oscar Wilde 
  15 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 1 by Oscar Wilde 
  16 - The Canterville Ghost - Part 2 by Oscar Wilde

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