TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. THE HUNTSMAN (Егерь) (1885) Yegor is hunting with his dog when he hears his name called by Pelagea, the young woman he had married twelve years previously and who is still hopelessly in love with him. (1,700 words)
2. SORROW (Горе) (1885) The introverted monologue of a peasant who is almost lost in a violent snow-storm driving his critically-ailing wife to the hospital, as he reviews his life and marriage. (2,200 words)
3. LADIES (Дамы) (1886) The Director of (…)
Most recent articles
-
"The Huntsman" and other Chekhov stories
9 June 2020, by Anton Chekhov -
"The Players of Null-A" (1948-49) by A. E. van Vogt
6 June 2020, by A. E. van VogtThis major work, first published in the October-November-December 1948 and January 1949 issues of Astounding Science Fiction as The Players of Ā, is the direct sequel to his renowned 1945 opus The World of Null-A.
It has all the key players of the first episode – the Null-A (non-Aristotelian) mutant Gilbert Gosseyn with an extra brain(!) who has learned how to “similarize” (transport instantaneously) himself to previously-memorised places in case of need, the superiorly intelligent and (…) -
An anthology of famous French poems, with their English translations
1 June 2020, by RayThere is surely a consensus among cognoscenti that famous texts such as François Villon’s La ballade des pendus, (“Song of the Hanged Men”), Lamartine’s Le lac, (“The Lake”), Rimbaud’s Le bateau ivre (‘The Drunken Boat”) and Apollinaire’s Le pont Mirabeau (“The Mirabeau Bridge") are all among the greatest poetic texts in the language of Rabelais, Ronsard and Racine.
You will find them all here, transposed into the language of Dickens and Dylan, as well as twenty-nine other texts worthy of (…) -
A selection of Tang Dynasty poems
25 May 2020, by RayThe Tang dynasty (618-907 AD) was a period of extraordinary flourishing of the Chinese civilisation in all domains, notably art and literature.
No other civilisation has ever placed poetry on such an elevated pedestal in its scale of values: everyone with an education wrote poetry from the Emperor on downwards, and the most famous poets were honoured in the streets and in the palaces like the stars of popular culture are today.
A thousand years later, when the Qing dynasty published in (…) -
More of Jack London’s best Far North stories
21 May 2020, by Jack LondonTABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Wife of a King (1899) A prospector has left his half-Indian wife to join the flood of gold-seekers in Dawson, and when he fails to return word comes back about his dallying with a casino dancer, the plucky wife sets off for Dawson in the thick of winter to see for herself what is going on. She is taken in hand by several old hands who prepare her for a surprise confrontation with the erring husband at the city’s annual masked ball. (5,700 words).
2. At the (…) -
"The Night" and other stories by Guy de Maupassant
16 May 2020, by Guy de MaupassantA selection of nine memorable tales by Guy de Maupassant, all in new English translations — two for the first time — that have been done specially for this site.
An e-book, with the original French texts in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The original French texts can also be seen here. TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. SOUVENIR (1882) A detachment of French soldiers is retreating in winter at nighttime through enemy-occupied territory during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 when they (…) -
The Great Baseball Scandal - how the Mob won the 1919 World Series, by Nelson Algren
29 April 2020, by Nelson AlgrenBorn and bred in Chicago, a life-long fan of baseball in general and of his home team, the Chicago White Sox in particular, Nelson Algren (1909-1981), one of the finest American authors of his time, was particularly qualified to analyse the inner workings of the most sensational scandal in the history of professional sports, the corruption of of the most important event in the American sporting calendar, the World Series of baseball, in 1919.
To quote from his vivid account:
"There was (…) -
"War": Luigi Pirandello’s memorable story about parenthood in wartime (1918)
1 March 2020, by Luigi PirandelloLuigi Pirandello (1867-1936) was celebrated in his native Italy as a short-story writer before he achieved international acclaim towards the end of his career for ground-breaking modern plays such as Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Henry IV (1922) and Tonight We Improvise (1930).
He was one of the most prolific short-story writers of all time, with a total of 237 stories published during his long and fruitful career.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934.
This powerful (…) -
The Lyrical Ballads (1798) version of Coleridge’s "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" – the original and arguably most authentic text
19 February 2020, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge“Lyrical Ballads”, no doubt the most famous book of poetry in the English language, was jointly published in 1798 by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).
This book, generally considered to have ushered in the age of romanticism in English literature, contained two of the greatest poems in the language, Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey [1] and Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
The version of Coleridge’s masterpiece that is generally available today (…) -
"The Mutiny of the Elsinore" (1913) - an adventure novel on the high seas by Jack London
3 February 2020, by Jack LondonJohn Pathurst is a rich, very successful and very blasé 30-year-old writer who has taken passage on a big four-masted sailing-ship carrying coals from Baltimore to Seattle, with the aim of resting his jaded nerves. Right away there are signs that the trip is not going to be an easy one – the crew is a gang of drunken, incompetent landlubbers, his quarters are not the best on the ship much to his annoyance, the captain and first mate are strange fellows indeed and, especially, there is a (…)