Rifaat (1930-1996) did not go to university, spoke only Arabic, and seldom traveled abroad. This virtual immunity from Western influence lends a special authenticity to her direct yet sincere accounts of death, sexual fulfillment, the lives of women in purdah, and the frustrations of everyday life in a male-dominated Islamic environment.Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies, the collection admits the reader into a hidden private world, regulated by the call of the mosque, but often full of profound anguish and personal isolation. Badriyya's despariting anger at her deceitful husband, for example, or the hauntingly melancholy of "At the Time of the Jasmine," are treated with a sensitivity to the discipline and order of Islam.

    This collection contains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariously funny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all around the world - from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippy princesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have pretty maids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls; enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters.

    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

    Only his second collection (the first was Dark Carnival, later reworked into The October Country), it is a marvelous, if mostly dark, quilt of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. In an ingenious framework to open and close the book, Bradbury presents himself as a nameless narrator who meets the Illustrated Man--a wanderer whose entire body is a living canvas of exotic tattoos. What's even more remarkable, and increasingly disturbing, is that the illustrations are themselves magically alive, and each proceeds to unfold its own story, such as "The Veldt," wherein rowdy children take a game of virtual reality way over the edge. Or "Kaleidoscope," a heartbreaking portrait of stranded astronauts about to reenter our atmosphere--without the benefit of a spaceship. Or "Zero Hour," in which invading aliens have discovered a most logical ally--our own children. Even though most were written in the 1940s and 1950s, these 18 classic stories will be just as chillingly effective 50 years from now. --Stanley WiaterContents:· Prologue: The Illustrated Man · ss * · The Veldt [“The World the Children Made”] · ss The Saturday Evening Post Sep 23 ’50 · Kaleidoscope · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct ’49 · The Other Foot · ss New Story Magazine Mar ’51 · The Highway [as by Leonard Spalding] · ss Copy Spr ’50 · The Man · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb ’49 · The Long Rain [“Death-by-Rain”] · ss Planet Stories Sum ’50 · The Rocket Man · ss Maclean’s Mar 1 ’51 · The Fire Balloons [“‘In This Sign...’”] · ss Imagination Apr ’51 · The Last Night of the World · ss Esquire Feb ’51 · The Exiles [“The Mad Wizards of Mars”] · ss Maclean’s Sep 15 ’49; F&SF Win ’50 · No Particular Night or Morning · ss * · The Fox and the Forest [“To the Future”] · ss Colliers May 13 ’50 · The Visitor · ss Startling Stories Nov ’48 · The Concrete Mixer · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr ’49 · Marionettes, Inc. [Marionettes, Inc.] · ss Startling Stories Mar ’49 · The City [“Purpose”] · ss Startling Stories Jul ’50 · Zero Hour · ss Planet Stories Fll ’47 · The Rocket [“Outcast of the Stars”] · ss Super Science Stories Mar ’50 · Epilogue · aw *

    Ranging from the gothic South to the chic East Coast, from rural children to aging urban sophisticates, all the unforgettable places and people of Capote’s oeuvre are here, in stories as elegant as they are heartfelt, as haunting as they are compassionate. Reading them reminds us of the miraculous gifts of a beloved American original.

    From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.

    Translated from the French by Justin O'Brien.The six works featured in this volume are: "The Adulterous Woman" ("La Femme adultère") "The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" ("Le Renégat ou un esprit confus") "The Silent Men" ("Les Muets") "The Guest" ("L'Hôte") "Jonas or the Artist at Work" ("Jonas ou l’artiste au travail") "The Growing Stone" ("La Pierre qui pousse")

    Samanta Schweblin haunts and mesmerizes in this extraordinary, masterful collection.Schweblin's stories have the feel of a sleepless night, where every shadow and bump in the dark take on huge implications, leaving your pulse racing, and the line between the real and the strange blur.

    ‘Rashōmon’ and ‘In a Bamboo Grove’ inspired Kurosawa’s magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as ‘The Nose’, ‘O-Gin’ and ‘Loyalty’ paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as ‘Death Register’, ‘The Life of a Stupid Man’ and ‘Spinning Gears’, Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories.A WORLD IN DECAY- Rashōmon- In a Bamboo Grove- The Nose- Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale- The Spider Thread- Hell ScreenUNDER THE SWORD- Dr. Ogata Ryōsai: Memorandum- O-Gin- LoyaltyMODERN TRAGICOMEDY- The Story of a Head That Fell Off- Green Onions- Horse LegsAKUTAGAWA'S OWN STORY- Daidōji Shinsuke: The Early Years- The Writer's Craft- The Baby's Sickness- Death Register- The Life of a Stupid Man- Spinning Gears

    However, this anecdote is told ninety-nine more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms.

    This title is part of Andersen's Fairy Tales, Volume 2.About the authorHans Christian Andersen, one of the best known figures in literature, is best know for combining traditional folk tales with his own great imagination to produce fairy tales known to most children today. The Danish writer was born in the slums of Odense. Although he was raised in poverty, he eventually attended Copenhagen University.Although Andersen wrote poems, plays and books, he is best known for his Fairy Tales and Other Stories, written between 1835 and 1872. This work includes such famous tales as The Emperor's New Clothes, Little Ugly Duckling, The Tinderbox, Little Claus and Big Claus, Princess and the Pea, The Snow Queen, The Little Mermaid, The Nightingale, The Story of a Mother and The Swineherd.Andersen's greatest work is still influential today, helping mold some of the works of writers ranging from Charles Dickens to Oscar Wilde and inspiring many of the works of Disney and other motion pictures.Andersen, who traveled greatly during his life, died in his home in Rolighed on August 4, 1875.(Bowker Author Biography)

    Reginald Peacock's day --Sun and moon --Feuille d'album --A dill pickle --The little governess --Revelations --The escape.

    In these three tales, superbly translated by Edward Seidensticker, erotic fantasy is underlaid with longing and memories of past loves.In the title story, the protagonist visits a brothel where elderly men spend a chaste but lecherous night with a drugged, unconscious virgin. As he admires the girl's beauty, he recalls his past womanizing, and reflects on the relentless course of old age. In One Arm, a young girl removes her right arm and gives it to the narrator to take home for the night; a surreal seduction follows as he tries to allay its fears, caresses it, and even replaces his own right arm with it.The protagonist of Of Birds and Beasts prefers the company of his pet birds and dogs to people, yet for him all living beings are beautiful objects which, though they give him pleasure, he treats with casual cruelty.Beautiful yet chilling, richly poetic yet subtly disturbing, these stories make compelling reading and reaffirm Kawabata s status as a world-class writer.

    Before long, Babette has convinced them to try something other than boiled codfish and ale bread: a gourmet French meal. Her feast scandalizes the elders, except for the visiting general. Just who is this strangely talented Babette, who has terrified this pious town with the prospect of losing their souls for enjoying too much earthly pleasure?

    Here the protagonist is Anson Hunter, a well-to-do young New Yorker, who would seem to have the whole world ahead of him and the streets paved in gold.By his early twenties, he has found his ideal woman as well: the exquisite -- and very rich -- Paula Legendre. On the surface, Paula would not seem to be the type of girl that would exert such a pull on Anson. Anson seems to have a lot of oats to sow, and Fitzgerald describes Paula as being "conservative and rather proper." But he is, nonetheless, obsessed by her, not because she represents the money he wants -- after all, he already has enough of his own -- but because she represents the social system that justifies his existence. In his world, responsible older men (like his uncle Robert) hold the reins of government and business; chaste and proper women (like Paula and her mother) maintain the rules of propriety and etiquette; and, until they get old enough to assume the mantle of responsible older manhood, playboys like Anson play. That is all Anson thinks he is doing right now. Just as he sees in himself the undeveloped kernel of a future leader, he sees in Paula the kernel of a future society matron. He thinks they would make a good pair.What he doesn't realize, however, is that his virtually unlimited wealth has within it the power to corrupt him, and it's already doing a good job. His first problem is that he sees himself as superior. He carries himself that way; Fitzgerald says that ". . . He had a confident charm and a certain brusque style, and the upper-class men who passed him on the street knew without being told that he was a rich boy and had gone to one of the best schools. . . . Anson accepted without reservation the world of high finance and high extravagance, of divorce and dissipation, of snobbery and of privilege."Anson doesn't see any reason why, being young and rich, he has to play by anyone else's rules. If he wants to drink himself under the table, why shouldn't he have the right to do that? And regardless of where or with whom he happens to be when he acts drunkenly, or obscenely, or boorishly, why should he apologize for his behavior? He's rich, and the rich make the rules, don't they? People should just accept his natural superiority, regardless of how he behaves.It would seem very difficult to sympathize with a character who holds these beliefs and acts upon them so wholeheartedly; but we do, because we sense that he is headed for a fall. His first mistake lies in his inability to commit himself to Paula. Fate gave Anson every opportunity to take Paula as his own. In doing so, he would be asserting his adulthood; he would be taking his place alongside the other well-to-do movers and shakers of New York. But, true to his status as a tragic hero, he constantly tries to defy fate. The role ordained for him is to be a wealthy, responsible scion of business, a lord of some suburban manor, the benefactor of deserving charities; for far too long, he refuses. Anson doesn't want to grow up. He gets a job, "entering a brokerage house, joining half a dozen clubs, [and] dancing late." Even as he moves up the corporate ladder, there is still that part of him that is unable to give up the schoolboy carousing, the indifference toward the responsibilities that fate has laid upon his shoulders as the wages of being rich.His second mistake is in self-righteously condemning his aunt Edna for having an affair. Anson, of all people, ought to be the last person to condemn anyone for moral lapses, and certainly not lapses of the heart; Anson's heart is far more lapsed than Edna and Cary's. He himself had just broken up with Dolly Karger, whom he dated all the while knowing she meant nothing to him, and her careless behavior merely mirrored his own. He has no right to threaten to expose Edna and Cary, and he is thus directly responsible for Cary's suicide. But "Anson never blamed himself for his part in the affair [because he believed] the situation which brought it about had not been of his making." But there, of course, he is wrong.His third mistake lies in the belief that when he is ready, Paula will be waiting. He is disturbed when he hears she has married someone else, but, as we have pointed out, Anson lives in a world characterized by "divorce and dissipation", and he seems to feel Paula will come around on his timetable. What this basically amounts to is a belief that fate is on his side; it must be, because he was born rich. But the overriding lesson of Anson's life is that of those to whom much is given, much is asked. Anson does not seem to realize that payback is a lifelong process.The rich boy --The bridal party --The last of the belles.