This collection of stories cuts through the hype of modern living, travelling inward to the elusive terrain of dreams and nightmares.

    Flashbacks and multilayered stories reveal his life: an impoverished upbringing as an orphan, his eventual rise to wealth and success—despite racial and class prejudice—and an obsession with a girl from an affluent family that has haunted him all his life. A True Novel then widens into an examination of Japan’s westernization and the emergence of a middle class.   The winner of Japan’s prestigious Yomiuri Literature Prize, Mizumura has written a beautiful novel, with love at its core, that reveals, above all, the power of storytelling.

    Set onboard a ship during an unnamed war, the title story is a harrowing account of guilt and responsibility, showing Conrad at his most accomplished as a master of psychological penetration. Accompanying this is another study of the brutal turns of fortune visited on the unwary by war: 'The Warrior's Soul' takes place during Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and traces the interweaving relationship between a beautiful woman and the two men who love her. 'Prince Roman', meanwhile, is one of Conrad's earliest stories, and the only piece in his entire oeuvre that touches on his homeland, Poland. The collection concludes with 'The Black Mate', a witty and light-hearted illustration of life aboard ship." "Spanning Joseph Conrad's entire literary career, these four stories touch on some of his major interests - war, imperialism, life at sea - showing him at his most intimate and ambitious."

    Le Guin has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field - and is likewise feted beyond the confines of the genre. The Wind's Twelve Quarters was her first collection and it brings together some of finest short fiction, including the Hugo Award-winning The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, the Nebula Award-winning The Day Before the Revolution, and the Hugo-nominated Winter's King, which gave readers their first glimpse of the world later made famous in her Hugo- and Nebula-winning masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness.Contents:The Wind's Twelve Quarters • (1975) • collection by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Compass Rose • (1982) • collection by Ursula K. Le GuinA Trip to the Head • (1970) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinApril in Paris • (1962) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinDarkness Box • (1963) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinDirection of the Road • (1973) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinForeword (The Wind's Twelve Quarters) • (1975) • essay by Ursula K. Le GuinNine Lives • (1969) • novelette by Ursula K. Le GuinSemley's Necklace • [Hainish] • (1964) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of The Dowry of Angyar)The Day Before the Revolution • [Hainish] • (1974) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Field of Vision • (1973) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Good Trip • (1970) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Masters • (1963) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas • (1973) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Rule of Names • [Earthsea Cycle] • (1964) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Stars Below • (1974) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Word of Unbinding • [Earthsea Cycle] • (1964) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThings • (1970) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinVaster Than Empires and More Slow • (1971) • novelette by Ursula K. Le GuinWinter's King • (1969) • novelette by Ursula K. Le GuinGwilan's Harp • (1977) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinIntracom • (1974) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinMalheur County • (1979) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinMazes • (1975) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinPreface (The Compass Rose) • (1982) • essay by Ursula K. Le GuinSchrödinger's Cat • (1974) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinSmall Change • (1981) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinSome Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time • (1979) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinSQ • (1978) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinSur • (1982) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics • (1974) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Diary of the Rose • [Orsinia] • (1976) • novelette by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Eye Altering • (1976) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe First Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb • (1978) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe New Atlantis • (1975) • novelette by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Pathways of Desire • (1979) • novelette by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Phoenix • (1982) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Water Is Wide • (1976) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe White Donkey • (1980) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinThe Wife's Story • (1982) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le GuinTwo Delays on the Northern Line • [Orsinia] • (1979) • shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin

    Written with compassionate realism and wit, the stories in this mesmerizing collection depict the disparities of town and village life in South America, of the frightfully poor and the outrageously rich, of memories and illusions, and of lost opportunities and present joys.

    Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish author, playwright and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death."The Birthday of the Infanta" is a historical fiction short story for children by the Irish author Oscar Wilde. It was first published in the 1891 anthology House of Pomegranates, which also includes "The Young King', "The Fisherman and his Soul" and "The Star-Child".The action of "The Birthday of the Infanta" takes place in Spain at an unspecified point in the past. It is the twelfth birthday of the Infanta, the only daughter, and only child, of the King of Spain. For her entertainment, an ugly young dwarf dancer is brought to the court. The Dwarf is completely unaware of how hideous he looks and does not realize that the reason that others laugh in his presence is because they are mocking his appearance. When the Dwarf sees his own reflection for the first time in his life, the consequences are severe.

    As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him, and learn that he has also kept a vital, dangerous secret. Edwidge Danticat's brilliant exploration of the "dew breaker"—or torturer—is an unforgettable story of love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. It firmly establishes her as one of America's most essential writers.

    Intimate, mysterious, and uncanny, these stories reveal a mind that is as undeniably singular as it is universal. Together, they constitute the debut short-story collection from Zambra, whose first novel was heralded as a “bloodletting in Chilean literature.”Whether chronicling the return of a mercurial godson or the disappearance of a trusted cousin, the worlds of these stories are so powerful and deep that the works might better be described as brief novels. My Documents is by turns hilarious and heart-stopping, tragic and tender, but most of all, it is unflinchingly human and essential evidence of a sublimely talented writer working at the height of his powers.

    Unpredictable, daring, and highly controlled, yet somehow haywire, a Bolano story might concern an elusive plagiarist, or an elderly lawyer giving up city life for an improbable return to the family estate, now gone to wrack and ruin. Bolano's stories have been applauded as "bleakly luminous and perfectly calibrated" (Publishers Weekly) and"complex and provocative" (International Herald Tribune), and as Francine Prose said in The New York Times Book Review, "something extraordinarily beautiful and (at least to me) entirely new." Two fascinating essays are also included.

    The translation by Ivan Morris is outstanding." —The New York Times**Winner of the 1952 Yomiuri Prize**This haunting novel explores the complete degradation and isolation of a man by war. Fires on the Plain is set on the island of Leyte in the Philippines during World War II, where the Japanese army is disintegrating under the hammer blows of the American landings. Within this broader disintegration is another, that of a single human being, Private Tamura. The war destroys each of his ties to society, one by one, until Tamura, a sensitive and intelligent man, becomes an outcast.Nearly losing the will to survive, he hears of a port still in Japanese hands and struggles to walk through the American lines. Unfazed by danger, he welcomes the prospect of dying, but first, he loses his hope, and then his sanity. Lost among his hallucinations, Tamura comes to fancy himself an angel enjoined by God to eat no living thing—but even angels fall.Tamura is never less than human, even when driven to the ultimate sin against humanity. Shocking as the outward events are, the greatness of the novel lies in its uplifting vision during a time of crushing horror. As relevant today as when it was originally published, Fires on the Plain will strike a chord with anyone who has lived through the horrors of war.

    

    A short story that is exploring the consequences of Simulation Argument for a deterministic universe.

    After devoting their energies and income for ten years to replacing a borrowed diamond necklace which they have lost, a woman and her husband learn the irony of their efforts.

    Today it is thought of mainly as a children's story, and Kaguya-hime, the heroine, looks in the illustrations as lovable as Snow-White or Cinderella; there is no suggestions of the heartlessness that is perhaps her most memorable feature. Elements in the narrative recall similar tales from other parts of the world. The tests to which the suitors are subjected resemble the riddles asked by the icy Princess Turandot, or we may recall the three caskets among which the suitors had to choose in The Merchant of Venice. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the tests Kaguya-hime imposes is the humor with which they are related. The second suitor's lyrical description of the magical island of Horai, where he allegedly found the jeweled branch, is interrupted by the mundane demands of the artisans who actually made it. Again, the fourth suitor, at the end of his unsuccessful quest, urges his men to stay away from the vicinity of the house of "that thief of a Kaguya-hime." Such a characterization of the heroine takes us from the realm of the children's story.About thirty-five years ago I first published a translation of The Tales of the Bamboo Cutter in the journal Monumenta Nipponica. A few years later-in the summer of 1965-a Japanese publisher conceived the plan of a book that would incorporate my translation, the translation into modern Japanese by the great novelist Yasunari Kawabata, and illustrations by one of the outstanding contemporary Japanese painters. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to revise my translation.About this time, I visited an exhibition of kirie (paper-cut pictures) by Masayuki Miyata, and discovered that he had actually completed series of works illustrating The Tale if the Bamboo Cutter. I was delighted that at last it would be possible to realize the project first conceived so many years before. There were still further delays, but at last the book has materialized. [This work] combines the work of unknown Japanese writer of over a thousand years ago, the translation by a master of modern Japanese, illustrations by an outstanding artist, and a translation by an American who has devoted his life to the study of Japanese literature.

    In her deft hands, “relationships and mundane activities take on mythic qualities” (The Wall Street Journal).In this collection, Bender’s unique talents sparkle brilliantly in stories about people searching for connection through love, sex, and family—while navigating the often painful realities of their lives. A traumatic event unfolds when a girl with flowing hair of golden wheat appears in an apple orchard, where a group of people await her. A woman plays out a prostitution fantasy with her husband and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life. An ugly woman marries an ogre and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children. Two sisters travel deep into Malaysia, where one learns the art of mending tigers who have been ripped to shreds.In these deeply resonant stories—evocative, funny, beautiful, and sad—we see ourselves reflected as if in a funhouse mirror. Aimee Bender has once again proven herself to be among the most imaginative, exciting, and intelligent writers of our time.