Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  A Tale of One January

  Albert Maltz

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  Poland, January 1945. Two women and four men escape from a Nazi death march after enduring the horrors of imprisonment at Auschwitz. Despite their individual backgrounds and nationalities, they form their own family caught between the euphoria of freedom and the terror of their circumstances. This is a tale of exploding joy within a hothouse of fear, of human beings erupting into life after breaking free of death’s embrace – an unusual and moving tale that cements Albert Maltz’s reputation as a compassionate observer of character and one of the finest storytellers of his generation.
  Read by the versatile AudioFile Golden Voice, Rupert Degas, and including the music that features within the story.

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  A Story Without a Title

  Anton Chekhov

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  "A Story Without a Title"  is an 1888 humorous story by Anton Chekhov.
  In a remote 5th century monastery the monks live and toil, led by an elderly abbot. The old man likes to play the organ, write music and compose Latin verses but is famous most of all for his eloquence and fiery, inspirational monologues which leave everybody around him enchanted. Then one night a drunkard knocks the door of the gates, saying he'd got lost on his way and asking them to give him food and wine. After the supper, instead of thanks, he rather shames the monks for spending their lives away, while the townsfolk keep on drowning themselves in debauchery and vice. The guest's speech sounds offensive, but the abbot sees the point and suggests that he makes a trip to the town himself.
  The monks wait for the old man for three months. He returns silent and morose, then spends the next seven days fasting, playing the organ and crying. Back from his cell, he tells them the appalling story of the sin raging in the town, its people indulging in all manner of pleasures, drinking wine, visiting brothels, watching lustful harlots dancing on tables. Unfortunately, one of his bouts of inspiration hits him and the monks are transfixed. Having described the charms of evil, the old man curses the devil and departs to shut himself up in his cell. When he comes out in the morning, there is not a monk left in the monastery; they had all fled to the town.

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  The Young Pitcher

  Zane Grey

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  Hazing became a regular form of initiation, not just for college fraternities and sororities, but also for sports teams. The latter ranged from relatively benign pranks to more physical and mental “put downs.” Therefore, it wasn’t unusual for author Pearl Zane Grey to have such personal confrontations, because he loved the game of baseball and was a good enough player to earn a baseball scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania. He once dropped his surname to preserve his scholarship while playing in lower-level minor league games. His knowledge later led to writing two published books about baseball, including the one you’re about to hear. 
  Exposed to tales of the Old West, Grey shifted his literary focus and became better known for books about western adventures, leading to a successful writing career that included a total of eighty-nine books. Listen now to the outlandish behavior encountered by youthful Ken Ward as he entered the fictional college baseball arena, so very different from the game of today.

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  Benediction - From their pens to...

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born on 24th September 1896 in Saint Paul, Minnesota into an upper-middle class family. Whilst his mother was pregnant with him, his two young sisters tragically died.  Fitzgerald once said this was when his destiny as a writer was ordained. 
  His intelligence and talent was recognised from an early age, with his first story, about a detective being published in the school magazine when he was just 13.   
  In 1913 he enrolled at Princeton but his devotion to his own literary pursuits resulted in him leaving and, rather bizarrely, joining the Army.  In 1918, stationed at Fort Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama he met and became infatuated and then inseparable from Zelda Sayre.  Initially though she refused to marry him but with the success of ‘This Side of Paradise’, the fame and the flow of money enabled them both to begin a gilded life.  For them this was The Jazz Age.  For Fitzgerald he was already an alcoholic. 
  He continued to write with great mastery and the titles of his novels and many of his 164 short stories are household names.  The Great Gatsby, often cited as The Great American Novel was published to mixed reviews.  As America moved from the Great Depression to the slaughter of the Second World War his works and himself were seen as far too entwined with the decadent twenties. The world had moved on and he hadn’t.   
  Further tragedy was never far from his life. Zelda after years of erratic and now intolerable behaviour was committed to an institution in 1936.  His own sales began to decline and he became a hack for hire in Hollywood, dependent on increasing amounts of booze and the weekly pay check.  His drunken state had often resulted in arrest or hospitalisation, further imperiling his talents.   Despite his contribution to many MGM films he received only one credit. 
  The end came all too soon for one of America’s greatest ever writers.  On 21st December 1940, at only 44 years of age in Hollywood, F Scott Fitzgerald succumbed to a heart attack.

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  Versio Latina (Homeri Odyssea)...

  Homer

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  The Versio Latina, or Latin translation of the works of Homer, has existed since the 14th century, but was first printed, under the name of Andreas Divus, in 1537. It is a crib, to give it no finer name, but a crib which had immense influence, being the first introduction to Homer for generations of mediaeval and early modern scholars. (Introduction by hefyd)

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  Josephine the Songstress

  Franz Kafka

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  "Josephine the Songstress, or the Mouse Folk"  is the last short story written by Franz Kafka.The story was included in the collection A Hunger Artist published by Verlag Die Schmiede soon after Kafka's death.Franz Kafka's "Josephine the Songstress, or The Mouse Folk" follows the attempts of a member of a community to understand and explain the art of their only singer, Josephine, and the powerful effect that her singing has on the community that ordinarily has no use for song or diversion.

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