Book picks similar to
Barn Burning by William Faulkner


short-stories
classics
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short-story

The Marrow of Tradition


Charles W. Chesnutt - 1901
    For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Signs and Symbols (Stories of Vladimir Nabokov)


Vladimir Nabokov - 1948
    

Girl


Jamaica Kincaid - 1978
    Girl was originally published in the June 26, 1978 issue of The New Yorker and subsequently included in the short story collection At the Bottom of the River in 1983.

Tender Buttons


Gertrude Stein - 1914
    Stein's strong influence on 20th-century literature is evident in this 1915 work of highly original prose rendered in thought-provoking experimental techniques.

Lost in the Funhouse


John Barth - 1968
    Though many of the stories gathered here were published separately, there are several themes common to them all, giving them new meaning in the context of this collection.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas


Ursula K. Le Guin - 1973
    Some inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.The story "Omelas" was first published in New Dimensions 3, a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won Le Guin the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story.It was subsequently printed in her short story collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters in 1975.

Things Fall Apart


Chinua Achebe - 1958
    Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.

Ceremony


Leslie Marmon Silko - 1977
    His return to the Laguna Pueblo reservation only increases his feeling of estrangement and alienation. While other returning soldiers find easy refuge in alcohol and senseless violence, Tayo searches for another kind of comfort and resolution. Tayo's quest leads him back to the Indian past and its traditions, to beliefs about witchcraft and evil, and to the ancient stories of his people. The search itself becomes a ritual, a curative ceremony that defeats the most virulent of afflictions—despair.

The Night in Question


Tobias Wolff - 1995
    A young woman visits her father following his nervous breakdown, and a devoted sister is profoundly unsettled by the sermon her brother insists on reciting. Whether in childhood or Vietnam, in memory or the eternal present, these people are revealed in the extenuating, sometimes extreme circumstances of everyday life, and in the complex consequences of their decisions—that, for instance, can bring together an innocent inner-city youth and a little girl attacked, months earlier, by a dog in a wintry park. Yet each story, however crucial, is marked by Mr. Wolff’s compassionate understanding and humor.In short, fiction of dazzling emotional range and absolute authority.

Long Day's Journey into Night


Eugene O'Neill - 1956
    First published by Yale University Press in 1956, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and has since sold more than one million copies. This edition includes a new foreword by Harold Bloom.The action covers a fateful, heart-rending day from around 8:30 am to midnight, in August 1912 at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones - the semi-autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents at their home, Monte Cristo Cottage.One theme of the play is addiction and the resulting dysfunction of the family. All three males are alcoholics and Mary is addicted to morphine. They all constantly conceal, blame, resent, regret, accuse and deny in an escalating cycle of conflict with occasional desperate and half-sincere attempts at affection, encouragement and consolation.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner


Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1792
    Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 and featuring a gloss. Along with other poems in Lyrical Ballads, it was a signal shift to modern poetry and the beginning of British Romantic literature.It relates the events experienced by a mariner who has returned from a long sea voyage. The Mariner stops a man on his way to a wedding ceremony and begins to narrate a story. The Wedding-Guest's reaction turns from bemusement to impatience, fear, and fascination as the Mariner's story progresses, as can be seen in the language style: for example, the use of narrative techniques such as personification and repetition to create a sense of danger, or the supernatural, or serenity, depending on the mood each different part of the poem.

In the Penal Colony


Franz Kafka - 1919
    

Kew Gardens


Virginia Woolf - 1919
    The book's jacket design and page illustrations were by her sister, artist Vanessa Bell. More than sixty years later, The Hogarth Press at Chatto & Windus has published a lovely facsimile of that prized edition of 'Kew Gardens'. The lush and haunting story circles around Kew Gardens one hot day in July, as various odd and interesting couples walk by and talk, exchanging words but letting thoughts and memories float languorously above the glossy leaves and exotic blooms, while at their feet, a determined snail makes its way slowly across a mountainous flower bed. Elegantly produced, a precise replica of that 1927 special edition, with Vanessa Bell's jacket and decorative drawings, this is a rare treat for Bloomsbury devotees and all who love beautiful books.

In a Grove


Ryūnosuke Akutagawa - 1922
    Akira Kurosawa used this story as the basis for his award-winning movie Rashōmon."In a Grove" is an early modernist short story consisting of seven varying accounts of the murder of a samurai, Kanazawa no Takehiro, whose corpse has been found in a bamboo forest near Kyoto. Each section simultaneously clarifies and obfuscates what the reader knows about the murder, eventually creating a complex and contradictory vision of events that brings into question humanity's ability or willingness to perceive and transmit objective truth.The story is often praised as being among the greatest in Japanese literature.

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness


Richard Yates - 1962
    Most of the stories feature men who have been disappointed, somehow, by their inability to go on and fulfill the promise of their youth.Contents "Doctor Jack-o'-lantern" "The Best of Everything" "Jody Rolled The Bones" "No Pain Whatsoever" "A Glutton for Punishment" "A Wrestler with Sharks" "Fun with a Stranger" "The B.A.R. Man" "A Really Good Jazz Piano" "Out with the Old" "Builders"