Résultats lu par "David Parker" dans Toutes les catégories

In this series we try to offer up tried and trusted ‘Top Tens’ across many different themes and authors. But any anthology will immediately throw up the questions – Why that story? Why that author? In this volume the once forgotten literary backwaters of Scandinavia, and its hinterland, reveal the storied works of their own literature. Some names are familiar, some decidedly not. But each has literary talents and compelling narratives.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that are difficult to achieve elsewhere. The Gothic short story is one of the most enduring of genres. In this volume we explore works by classic authors from all corners of Europe as they explore and exploit narratives with their undeniable talents.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that are difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this volume we examine one of the great names from the past whose works invite life, rituals and the spirit world together to fashion dramatic and chilling unforeseen happenings.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this volume we come up against the definition of Northern Europe. There are many, each with plausibility and each so obvious. So, here’s ours.

Almost always when we think of Ghost Stories, we first think of those written by the Victorians. If you want a really good ghost story to bring that edge of chill, that foreboding of dread, that feeling that in an empty house we are not quite alone and that sometimes the sharp, sheer shock of what just happened is upon us then look no further than ‘The Victorian Ghost Story’ for your listening pleasure.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this volume the Mad Scientist takes centre stage. Naturally the stories come in all shapes and sizes and in the pens of our classic authors the scientists more usually arrive as dark, twisted and evil as they go about their work illuminating humanity as only a mad scientist can.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia. His family life was difficult; his father was strict and overbearing, but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’. Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’. His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.

Guy de Maupassant is justly revered as one of the strongest proponents of the short story. The miniature gems he created are woven from the many worlds and strata of society that surrounded him. From feuds and revenge to tales of avarice and friendship de Maupassant is the master of all and second to none.

Anton Chekhov is amongst the most vaunted of authors. His tales can take a small fragment of a person’s life and turn it into a narrative of unrivalled and compelling power. This volume perfectly illustrates Chekhov and his miniature masterpieces.

In this collection of short stories some of our most popular and well-known authors are grouped together with an unfortunate tag: dead at 46. These authors are not run-of-the-mill or ten a penny; many are literary leviathans who left enduring works of literature and sadly may have left us many more had they lived. We will never know.

With the talents on display the most difficult task is choosing only ten. Their virtuosity, their craft and ambition scare belie the difficulties that society places upon most women. Their words cannot be denied, their literary heritage is safe forever.

Whilst the notion of the Mystic East and Oriental wisdom was greatly romanticised by the Victorians and others, the shadow of Colonialism has smudged the view. These great cultures are some of humanity’s earliest, their works, their art some of its most daring and most accomplished. In these 50 poems across 50 poets we hope, at least in part, to rebalance our view of this subject. We begin in the 6th century BC and travel with a poet’s words and eyes across India, China, Persia and many other places in between.

In this volume our classic authors conjure up all sorts of damnations and destructions in literary assaults testing our will to survive and our ingenuity to overcome situations where the outlook is bleak at best and the total extinction of us at worse.

Hector Hugh Munro, more familiarly known by his pen-name ‘Saki’, was born in what was then Akyab in British Burma on 18th December 1870. His father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his mother the daughter of a Rear Admiral. After a stint working in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police, Saki decided to move to London to make a living as a writer. Initially he wrote as a journalist for a number of newspapers and magazines before attempting an historical study, ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’, whose real value lay in directing him to writing short stories instead.

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was born on 21st August in Oryol, Russia, to a middle-class family of Polish, Ukranian and Finnish ancestry. In 1898 his first short story ‘Bargamot and Garaska’, published in the ‘Kurier’ newspaper, caught the attention and friendship of Maxim Gorky. Andreyev now discarded any other career path apart from that of author. His classic story ‘Lazarus’ brilliantly tells the story of Christ’s disciple, forced to wander the earth for all time; it is both chilling and heart-breaking in its Russian setting.

The German peoples spent centuries as tribes and regions without being a whole. Otto von Bismarck was instrumental in unifying these central European states into one country albeit based on the militaristic doctrine of Prussia. In the 20th Century its history was blighted by its capacity to resort to war to fulfill its ambitions, or right its perceived historical wrongs. In this volume the short stories by its greatest authors readily attest that their talents are equal to the greatest in World literature.

Our fear of the Devil, whatever his temptations and rewards, is amplified by the thought of eternal damnation in his hell house service. In this volume our authors are all from Europe and see the Devil in ways that we recognise and yet are culturally distinct to the European mainland.

In this volume we examine the German language. Or rather the authors who wrote in German but are here translated into English. German is most often called the language of philosophers due to its precision and clarity. However, if you’ve studied German, you will know that sentence construction can be difficult to grasp. However, within these stories the language of these great talents express themselves in dazzling prose and searching narratives. And the characters? Clearly the works of genius.

Winifred Holtby was born on 23rd June 1898 to a prosperous farming family in the village of Rudston in Yorkshire. Her early novels met with only moderate success but as a journalist she was both prolific and increasingly well-known. Her articles graced more than 20 newspapers and magazines, including the Manchester Guardian newspaper.

Móric Jókay de Ásva was born on the 18th February 1825 in Komárom, then in the Kingdom of Hungary but now part of Slovakia. In 1848 he married the actress, Róza Laborfalvi. That same year Europe was awash with revolutions and Jókai, a moderate Liberal, enthusiastically supported the nationalist cause and its decision to depose the Habsburg dynasty. The attempt failed. He was now classified as a political suspect and threw himself into his literary career, writing dozens of novels, many of them masterpieces, stories, essays and the like. In total he wrote several hundred volumes.