He believes he is dying and in his feverish delirium various characters, both real and imaginary, appear to him as icy monsters.

    In a perfect fusion of treatment and theme, this powerful novel tells the story of a seventeenth-century Portuguese priest in Japan at the height of the fearful persecution of the small Christian community.

    She has learned well how to bury her feelings... and he has turned to religion as a refuge from his raging inner conflicts.Now they are together once again, embarking on a journey fraught with difficulties, as long-buried demons of blame and resentment resurface after more than a decade. But in a small village in the French Pyrenees, by the waters of the River Piedra, a most special relationship will be reexamined in the dazzling light of some of life’s biggest questions.

    Gogol's works remain popular with both writers and readers, who prize his originality, imaginative gifts, and sheer exuberance.This collection offers an excellent introduction to the author's works. Opening a door to his bizarre world of broad comedy, fantasy, and social commentary, the title story portrays a petty official's mental disintegration as he struggles for the attention of the woman he loves. Set during the repressive rule of Nicholas I, it satirizes the bureaucratic excesses of the era. Additional tales include "The Nevski Prospect," a portrayal of the feverish pace of St. Petersburg street life, and "The Portrait," a gripping depiction of a soul's perdition.

    Alfau's "comedy of gestures" - a mercurial dreamscape of the eccentric, sometimes criminal, habitues of Toledo's Cafe of the Crazy - was written in English and first published in 1936, favorably reviewed for "The Nation" by Mary McCarthy, as she recounts here in her Afterword, then long neglected.

    . . . Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty. . . . his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart” (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World).From the eBook edition.

    What the animals did not know was that they were the Keepers of Wyrm, monster of evil long imprisoned beneath the earth ... and Wyrm, sub terra, was breaking free.

    The king's house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. Since the king spent all his time sitting at the door for favors (favors being offered to the king, you understand), whenever he heard someone knocking at the door for petitions, he would pretend not to hear . . ." Why the petitioner required a boat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him, the reader will discover in this delightful fable, a philosophic love story worthy of Swift or Voltaire.

    In these fourteen stories, Hemingway begins to examine the themes that would occupy his later works: the casualties of war, the often uneasy relationship between men and women, sport and sportsmanship. In "Banal Story," Hemingway offers a lasting tribute to the famed matador Maera. "In Another Country" tells of an Italian major recovering from war wounds as he mourns the untimely death of his wife. "The Killers" is the hard-edged story about two Chicago gunmen and their potential victim. Nick Adams makes an appearance in "Ten Indians," in which he is presumably betrayed by his Indian girlfriend, Prudence. And "Hills Like White Elephants" is a young couple's subtle, heartwrenching discussion of abortion. Pared down, gritty, and subtly expressive, these stories show the young Hemingway emerging as America's finest short story writer.

    It begins with a man walking St. Petersburg's streets while musing upon how ridiculous his life is, as well as its distinct lack of meaning or purpose. This train of thought leads him to the idea of suicide, which he resolves to commit using a previously-acquired gun. However, a chance encounter with a distressed little girl in the street derails his drastic plans.

    Set amid the salon society of fin-du-siècle Paris, these sketches and short stories depict the lives, loves, manners, and motivations of a host of characters, all viewed with a famously knowing eye. By turns cuttingly satirical and bitterly moving, Proust’s portrayals are layered with imagery and feeling—whether they be of the aspiring Bouvard and Pécuchet, the deluded Madame de Breyves, or of Baldassare Silvande, steeped in memories, regret, and final understanding at the end of his life. Novelist Marcel Proust was a prominent figure in the French salons of the late 19th century; he is best remembered for his seven-volume masterpiece In Search of Lost Time.

    The book provides an indispensable guide to this often-demanding terrain for readers encountering theories of postmodernism for the first time and places the subject in a broad context. It introduces a wide range of ideas, thinkers, and views yet maintains the readers' focus by linking theory with concrete examples from both high and popular culture. After completing Teach Yourself Postmodernism, readers will never look at their world the same way again.

    Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

    In them we find loneliness, love, and the passage of time, demonstrating the range and complexity of a true master of short fiction.

    The stories are set in New York and in Italy (where Malamud's alter ego, the struggling New York Jewish painter, Arthur Fidelman, roams amid the ruins of old Europe in search of his artistic patrimony); they tell of egg candlers and shoemakers, matchmakers, and rabbis, in a voice that blends vigorous urban realism, Yiddish idiom, and a dash of artistic magic.The Magic Barrel is a book about New York and about the immigrant experience, and it is high point in the modern American short story. Few books of any kind have managed to depict struggle and frustration and heartbreak with such delight, or such artistry.