Book picks similar to
Creole Folktales by Patrick Chamoiseau
short-stories
fiction
folklore
caribbean
The Dwarf
Cho Se-Hui - 1978
First published in 1978, it speaks to the painful social costs of reckless industrialization, even as it tellingly portrays the spiritual malaise of the newly rich and powerful and a working class subject to forces beyond its control. Cho's lean, clipped, deceptively simple style, the rapidly shifting points of view, terse dialogue, and subtle irony evoke the particularities of life in 1970s South Korea in the presence of global economic forces.The desperate realities of life for the dwarf, the proverbial little guy upon whose back Korea's economic transformation largely took place, are emotively rendered in twelve linked stories examining the lives of a laboring family, a family of the newly emerging middle class, and that of a wealthy industrialist. The stories have overlapping characters and situations: the murder of a swindler, a family's eviction from a squatter settlement, the assassination of an important executive, the dwarf 's fantasy of a planet where life is easier, his later suicide and the subsequent fate of his dispersed friends and family members.
Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks
William Elliot Griffis - 1918
D. (1843-1928) was an American orientalist, author and Congregational preacher. In September 1870 Griffis was invited to Japan for the purpose of organizing schools along Western lines. He prepared the New Japan Series of reading and spelling books and primers for Japanese students in the English language. He published 18 books on Japan and Japanese culture, wrote several hundred articles, and made numerous public lectures. It wasn't just Japan and the Orient he was interested in, in his lifetime Griffis travelled to Europe 11 times, mainly to the Netherlands. He was a member of the committee of the Boston Congregational Club to erect a Pilgrim memorial at Delfshaven, the Netherlands in 1909. In 1926 he returned to Japan to receive the Order of the Rising Sun. He died in 1928. His works include The Religions of Japan (1895), Charles Carleton Coffin (1898), Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks (1918) and Welsh Fairy Tales (1921).
The Young Queens
Kendare Blake - 2017
One would rise to become queen in her place. Perhaps the strongest of the three. Perhaps the cleverest. Or perhaps it would be the girl born under the best shield of luck.Katharine, Arsinoe and Mirabella - three young queens born to fulfil their destiny - to fight to the death to win the crown. But before they were poisoner, elemental and naturalist, they were children, sisters and friends . . .
The Girl Who Married a Lion: And Other Tales from Africa
Alexander McCall Smith - 2004
He now shares them in this jewel of a book.
Autobiography of a Corpse
Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky - 2013
This new collection of eleven mind-bending and spellbinding tales includes some of Krzhizhanovsky's most dazzling conceits: a provincial journalist who moves to Moscow finds his existence consumed by the autobiography of his room's previous occupant; the fingers of a celebrated pianist's right hand run away to spend a night alone on the city streets; a man's lifelong quest to bite his own elbow inspires both a hugely popular circus act and a new refutation of Kant. Ordinary reality cracks open before our eyes in the pages of Autobiography of a Corpse, and the extraordinary spills out.An NYRB Classics Original
The Childhood of Jesus
J.M. Coetzee - 2013
Here they are each assigned a name and an age, and held in a camp in the desert while they learn Spanish, the language of their new country. As Simón and David they make their way to the relocation centre in the city of Novilla, where officialdom treats them politely but not necessarily helpfully.Simón finds a job in a grain wharf. The work is unfamiliar and backbreaking, but he soon warms to his stevedore comrades, who during breaks conduct philosophical dialogues on the dignity of labour, and generally take him to their hearts.Now he must set about his task of locating the boy’s mother. Though like everyone else who arrives in this new country he seems to be washed clean of all traces of memory, he is convinced he will know her when he sees her. And indeed, while walking with the boy in the countryside Simón catches sight of a woman he is certain is the mother, and persuades her to assume the role.David's new mother comes to realise that he is an exceptional child, a bright, dreamy boy with highly unusual ideas about the world. But the school authorities detect a rebellious streak in him and insist he be sent to a special school far away. His mother refuses to yield him up, and it is Simón who must drive the car as the trio flees across the mountains.
Aesop's Fables
Aesop
Aesop was reputedly a tongue-tied slave who miraculously received the power of speech; from his legendary storytelling came the collections of prose and verse fables scattered throughout Greek and Roman literature. First published in English by Caxton in 1484, the fables and their morals continue to charm modern readers: who does not know the story of the tortoise and the hare, or the boy who cried wolf?
Adèle
Leïla Slimani - 2014
But underneath the surface, she is bored--and consumed by an insatiable need for sex.Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, Adèle organizes her day around her extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she's been, until she becomes ensnared in a trap of her own making. Suspenseful, erotic, and electrically charged, Adèle is a captivating exploration of addiction, sexuality, and one woman's quest to feel alive.
The Hogwarts Collection
J.K. Rowling - 2017
Rediscover the stories of Remus Lupin and Minerva McGonagall in Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies; delve into Horace Slughorn's early years in Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists; and venture into the Hogwarts grounds in Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide.
Music of a Life
Andreï Makine - 2001
But just before his début, his parents -- his father a famous playwright, and his mother a renowned opera singer -- are exposed for their political indiscretions and held under arrest. With World War II on the brink, and fearing that his own entrapment is not far behind, Alexeï flees to the countryside, assumes the identity of a Soviet soldier, and falls dangerously in love with a general officer's daughter. What follows is a two-decades-long journey through war and peace, love and betrayal, art and artifice -- a rare ensemble in the making of the music of a life.
A Bookshop in Algiers
Kaouther Adimi - 2017
A beautiful little novel about books, history, ambition and the importance of literature to everyone, especially people who are trying to find a voice.' Nick HornbyIn 1936, a young dreamer named Edmond Charlot opened a modest bookshop in Algiers. Once the heart of Algerian cultural life, where Camus launched his first book and the Free French printed propaganda during the war, Charlot's beloved bookshop has been closed for decades, living on as a government lending library. Now it is to be shuttered forever. But as a young man named Ryad empties it of its books, he begins to understand that a bookshop can be much more than just a shop that sells books. A Bookshop in Algiers charts the changing fortunes of Charlot's bookshop through the political drama of Algeria's turbulent twentieth century of war, revolution and independence. It is a moving celebration of books, bookshops and of those who dare to dream.
The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales
Franz Xaver von Schönwerth - 2015
With this volume, the holy trinity of fairy tales - the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen - becomes a quartet. In the 1850s, Franz Xaver von Schönwerth traversed the forests, lowlands, and mountains of northern Bavaria to record fairy tales, gaining the admiration of even the Brothers Grimm. Most of Schönwerth's work was lost - until a few years ago, when thirty boxes of manuscripts were uncovered in a German municipal archive.Now, for the first time, Schönwerth's lost fairy tales are available in English. Violent, dark, and full of action, and upending the relationship between damsels in distress and their dragon-slaying heroes, these more than seventy stories bring us closer than ever to the unadorned oral tradition in which fairy tales are rooted, revolutionizing our understanding of a hallowed genre.
A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys
Nathaniel Hawthorne - 1851
Included are The Gorgon’s Head, The Golden Touch, The Paradise of Children, The Three Golden Apples, The Miraculous Pitcher, and The Chimaera. In 1838, Hawthorne suggested to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that they collaborate on a story for children based on the legend of the Pandora’s Box, but this never materialized. He wrote A Wonder Book between April and July 1851, adapting six legends most freely from Charles Anton’s A Classical Dictionary (1842). He set out deliberately to “modernize” the stories, freeing them from what he called “cold moonshine” and using a romantic, readable style that was criticized by adults but proved universally popular with children. With full-color illustrations throughout by Arthur Rackham.
Tales from the Thousand and One Nights
N.J. Dawood - 1775
Dawood in Penguin Classics.The tales told by Scheherazade over a thousand and one nights to delay her execution by the vengeful King Shahryar have become among the most popular in both Eastern and Western literature. From the epic adventures of 'Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp' to the farcical 'Young Woman and her Five Lovers' and the social criticism of 'The Tale of the Hunchback', the stories depict a fabulous world of all-powerful sorcerers, jinns imprisoned in bottles and enchanting princesses. But despite their imaginative extravagance, the Tales are also anchored to everyday life by their bawdiness and realism, providing a full and intimate record of medieval Eastern world.In this selection, N.J. Dawood presents the reader with an unexpurgated translation of the finest and best-known tales, preserving their spirited narrative style in lively modern English. In his introduction, he discusses their origins in the East and their differences from Classical Arabic literature, and examines English translations of the tales since the eighteenth century.If you enjoyed Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, you might like Snorri Sturlson's The Prose Edda, also available in Penguin Classics.