Download or read book In Strange Gardens and Other Stories written by Peter Stamm and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the precision of a surgeon, Peter Stamm cuts to the heart of the fragile and revealing moments of everyday life. They are bankers, students, mothers, or retirees. They live in New York City or somewhere in Switzerland, they work in London or Riga, they cross paths in a Fado bar in Lisbon. They breathe the banal routine of daily life. It is to these ordinary people that Peter Stamm grants center stage in his latest collection of short stories. Henry, a cowherd turned stuntman, crisscrosses the country, dreaming of meeting a woman. Inger, the Dane, refuses her skimpy life and takes off for Italy. Regina, so lonely in her big house since her children left and her husband passed away, discovers the world anew thanks to the Australian friend of her granddaughter, who helps Regina envision her next voyage. In these stories, Stamm's clean style expresses despair without flash, through softness and small gestures, with disarming retorts full of derision and infinite tenderness. There, where life hesitates, ready to tip over—with nothing yet played out—is where these people and their stories exist. For us, they all become exceptional. Praise for Unformed Landscape: "Sensitive and unnerving. . . . An uncommonly intimate work, one that will remind the reader of his or her own lived experience with a greater intensity than many of the books that are published right here at home." —The New Republic Online

Download or read book In Strange Gardens and Other Stories written by Peter Stamm and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the precision of a surgeon, Peter Stamm cuts to the heart of the fragile and revealing moments of everyday life. They are bankers, students, mothers, or retirees. They live in New York City or somewhere in Switzerland, they work in London or Riga, they cross paths in a Fado bar in Lisbon. They breathe the banal routine of daily life. It is to these ordinary people that Peter Stamm grants center stage in his latest collection of short stories. Henry, a cowherd turned stuntman, crisscrosses the country, dreaming of meeting a woman. Inger, the Dane, refuses her skimpy life and takes off for Italy. Regina, so lonely in her big house since her children left and her husband passed away, discovers the world anew thanks to the Australian friend of her granddaughter, who helps Regina envision her next voyage. In these stories, Stamm's clean style expresses despair without flash, through softness and small gestures, with disarming retorts full of derision and infinite tenderness. There, where life hesitates, ready to tip over—with nothing yet played out—is where these people and their stories exist. For us, they all become exceptional. Praise for Unformed Landscape: "Sensitive and unnerving. . . . An uncommonly intimate work, one that will remind the reader of his or her own lived experience with a greater intensity than many of the books that are published right here at home." —The New Republic Online

Download or read book In Our Strange Gardens written by Michel Quint and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-12-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Our Strange Gardens was named a BookSense 76 Recommended Pick for January 2002! Michel has a story to tell. It's about his father, an exquisitely common man whose very ordinariness is a source of grave embarrassment for the boy. It's also the story told to him by his uncle, who shared a family secret with the child in the flickering black and white images of a Sunday matinee. Years before, in the bitter years of World War II, during the Nazi occupation of France, two brothers found themselves at the mercy of a German guard following an explosive act of resistance. Thrown into a deep pit with a small group of terrified prisoners, the men are told that one of them will die by dawn to serve as an example for the others. It's up to the prisoners to propose who will be sacrificed. But in the middle of the night, the guard returns with an extraordinary proposition of his own. A novel of revelation, innocence and ignorance, of the power of language and the strength and complexity of family, In Our Strange Gardens is a fable of nuance and power, a mesmerizing addition to the literature of war.

Download or read book The Tree in the Garden and Other Stories written by Brooks Horsley and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These stories are at right angles to things usual and familiar. What would happen if rainbows suddenly disappeared? How might the fallen angel tell the story of Adam and Eve? A walk in beautiful mountain country as a thing piercing and bleak beyond measure. A young terrorist dreams the impossible dream, and a young Harvard professor finds his weekend strangely frustrated and what comes of it. The reader will return from these and other stories to find his own world richer, stranger and more beautiful.

Download or read book The Short Story in German in the Twenty first Century written by Lyn Marven and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2020 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1990s, the short story has re-emerged in the German-speaking world as a vibrant literary genre, serving as a medium for both literary experimentation and popular forms. Authors like Judith Hermann and Peter Stamm have had a significant impact on German-language literary culture and, in translation, on literary culture in the UK and USA. This volume analyzes German-language short-story writing in the twenty-first century, aiming to establish a framework for further research into individual authors as well as key themes and formal concerns. An introduction discusses theories of the short-story form and literary-aesthetic questions. A combination of thematic and author-focused chapters then discuss key developments in the contemporary German-language context, examining performance and performativity, Berlin and crime stories, and the openendness, fragmentation, liminality, and formal experimentations that characterize short stories in the twenty-first century. Together the chapters present the rich field of short-story writing in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, offering a variety of theoretical approaches to individual stories and collections, as well as exploring connections with storytelling, modernist short prose, and the novella. The volume concludes with a survey of broad trends, and three original translations exemplifying the breadth of contemporary German-language short-story writing.

Download or read book Winter Garden written by Kristin Hannah and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn't know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes Kristin Hannah's powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past. Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya's life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother's life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.

Download or read book Moccasin Square Gardens written by Richard Van Camp and published by Douglas & McIntyre. This book was released on 2019-04-05 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The characters of Moccasin Square Gardens inhabit Denendeh, the land of the people north of the sixtieth parallel. These stories are filled with in-laws, outlaws and common-laws. Get ready for illegal wrestling moves (“The Camel Clutch”), pinky promises, a doctored casino, extraterrestrials or “Sky People,” love, lust and prayers for peace. While this is Van Camp’s most hilarious short story collection, it’s also haunted by the lurking presence of the Wheetago, human-devouring monsters of legend that have returned due to global warming and the greed of humanity. The stories in Moccasin Square Gardens show that medicine power always comes with a price. To counteract this darkness, Van Camp weaves a funny and loving portrayal of the Tłı̨chǫ Dene and other communities of the North, drawing from oral history techniques to perfectly capture the character and texture of everyday small-town life. “Moccasin Square Gardens” is the nickname of a dance hall in the town of Fort Smith that serves as a meeting place for a small but diverse community. In the same way, the collection functions as a meeting place for an assortment of characters, from shamans and time-travelling goddess warriors to pop-culture-obsessed pencil pushers, to con artists, archivists and men who just need to grow up, all seeking some form of connection.

Download or read book Shadows in the Garden and Other Stories written by Wayne Kyle Spitzer and published by Hobb's End Books. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original story upon which the film Shadows in the Garden is based ... and 7 other tales. A vignette of dream shimmers briefly in my mind. I remember I was crouched in a dark yard, this yard—staring at that same clothesline. I was cold, so cold, and frightened, and I didn't know why. It was far too dark to see anything clearly. I could tell only that there was something hung from the line. Approaching it, I saw how it swung back and forth in the night-wind heavily. It wasn't until I was close enough almost to touch it that I realized what it was. It was the pale woman's head …

Download or read book Flash Fiction International Very Short Stories from Around the World written by James Thomas and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling new anthology of the very best very short fiction from around the world. What is a flash fiction called in other countries? In Latin America it is a micro, in Denmark kortprosa, in Bulgaria mikro razkaz. These short shorts, usually no more than 750 words, range from linear narratives to the more unusual: stories based on mathematical forms, a paragraph-length novel, a scientific report on volcanic fireflies that proliferate in nightclubs. Flash has always—and everywhere—been a form of experiment, of possibility. A new entry in the lauded Flash and Sudden Fiction anthologies, this collection includes 86 of the most beautiful, provocative, and moving narratives by authors from six continents, including best-selling writer Etgar Keret, Zimbabwean writer Petina Gappah, Korean screenwriter Kim Young-ha, Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, and Argentinian “Queen of the Microstory” Ana María Shua, among many others. These brilliantly chosen stories challenge readers to widen their vision and celebrate both the local and the universal.

Download or read book THE GARDEN PARTY AND OTHER STORIES written by KATHERINE MANSFIELD and published by BEYOND BOOKS HUB. This book was released on 1932-01-01 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Seance and Other Stories written by Isaac Bashevis Singer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1980-11 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Translated by from Yiddish by Roger H. Klein and others.

Download or read book We re Flying written by Peter Stamm and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the publication of the widely acclaimed novel Seven Years comes a trove of stories from the Swiss master Peter Stamm. They all possess the traits that have built Stamm’s reputation: the directness of the prose, the deceptive surface simplicity of the narratives, and deep psychological insight into the existential dilemmas of contemporary life. Stamm does not waste a word, nor does he spare the reader’s feelings. These stories are a superb introduction to his work and a gift for all those who have come to regard his fiction as a precise rendering of the contemporary human psyche.

Download or read book It s Getting Dark written by Peter Stamm and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new story collection from “one of Europe’s most exciting writers” (New York Times Book Review) deftly evokes and explores the shifts that occur when the world grows dark. Snowed in at a remote artists’ residency in Vermont, Peter recalls another Christmas some thirty years earlier, when he met Marcia by chance on a trip to New York City. Only now, in this eerie, isolated place, does he begin to see the consequences of their brief affair through a series of connections. When Hubert asks Sabrina to model for a sculpture, she’s flattered and happy to help. But facing the finished product, looking at herself from previously hidden angles, disturbs her, and she becomes determined to follow her double after it’s sold to a collector. Uneasy in his own skin and with the humdrum life set out for him, David decides to rob a bank. He already has a mask for the purpose, but won’t be using it today. He’s heard that bank robbers often study the scene for weeks before they strike. So he’s started to lurk. We think we know our world, but then the familiar suddenly turns strange, and even frightening. In these powerfully affecting, minutely constructed stories, Peter Stamm illustrates how fragile our reality really is, how susceptible to tricks of the heart and mind.

Download or read book To the Back of Beyond written by Peter Stamm and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Man Booker Prize nominee Peter Stamm explores in his sixth novel what it means to be in the middle of nowhere, in mind and in body. Happily married with two children and a comfortable home in a Swiss town, Thomas and Astrid enjoy a glass of wine in their garden on a night like any other. Called back to the house by their son's cries, Astrid goes inside, expecting her husband to join her in a bit. But Thomas gets up and, after a brief moment of hesitation, opens the gate and walks out. No longer bound by the ties of his everyday life--family, friends, work--Thomas begins a winding trek across the countryside, exposed as never before to the Alpine winter. At home, Astrid wonders where he's gone, when he'll come back, whether he's still alive. Following Thomas and Astrid on their separate paths, To the Back of Beyond becomes ultimately a meditation on the limits of freedom and on the craving to be wanted.

Download or read book The Troll Garden And Other Stories written by Willa Cather and published by Graphic Arts Books. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With seven short stories, The Troll Garden is a comprehensive exploration of American artists, and the trials they face. In Flavia and Her Artists, a young woman named Imogen goes to visit her friend Flavia, who is a patron of artists. Joining Flavia’s group of artists, Imogen becomes immersed in the drama and gossip of the group. As Imogen witnesses the animosity of the group steadily grow, she realizes that it stems from Flavia’s own insecurities and arrogance. The Sculptor’s Funeral depicts the funeral of a successful sculptor, Harvey Marrick. When his body is returned to his hometown for his burial, there is a mix of emotions from his family and old acquaintances. Only Jim Lavid, Harvey’s old friend, truly mourns the death. However, Jim must wrestle with both grief and jealousy when he considers that Harvey was able to leave their small town, something Jim himself never could. With a similar tone, A Death in the Desert follows a man as he wrestles with his identity. Sharing a strong physical resemblance to his prodigy brother, Everett Hilgarde feels haunted by his brother’s shadow, robbing him of his sense of self. As the last story in the collection, Paul’s Case creates an echo that stays in the reader’s mind long after the tale is finished. When Paul, a young boy who has trouble fitting in, steals money from his father, he decides to run away to New York, pretending to be rich and fulfilling the life he’d always wanted. The Troll Garden by Willa Cather explores the melancholy tales of tortured artists without dwelling on the sorrow, instead focusing on the relatable instances and decisions that lead to such predicaments. Though first published one-hundred and fifteen years ago in 1905, Cather explores ever-present issues of identity, failure, and dreams that have remained to be relevant to a current audience. As her debut work of fiction, The Troll Garden marks a capstone in Willa Cather’s prolific career. Now presented in an easy-to-read font and with a striking new cover design, this edition of Willa Cather’s The Troll Garden is modern and relevant to a contemporary audience.

Download or read book The Archive of Feelings written by Peter Stamm and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given a second chance with an old love, a coolly detached archivist questions the life he could have had, and whether it’s not too late to live it. A poignant, ingeniously constructed new novel from “one of Europe’s most exciting writers” (New York Times Book Review). Forty years ago—almost a lifetime—he confessed his love to a classmate and close friend, Franziska. Now, living in his late mother’s house with the obsolete archive of the newspaper he once worked for, he looks back on days spent poring over files and clippings, increasingly withdrawn from the world. His occasional relationships never amounted to anything, and the memory of Franziska—who became pop singer Fabienne—continues to haunt him as she appears in the media. When the two cross paths again, the possibility of a different life feels achingly real. But should he risk the comfort of his ordered existence for a romance that might never match what he imagined? A subtle, mesmerizing portrait of late-blooming passion, The Archive of Feelings showcases Peter Stamm at his best.

Download or read book The Sweet Indifference of the World written by Peter Stamm and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE SEASON BY VOGUE In this alluring, melancholic novel—Peter Stamm at his best—a writer haunted by his double blurs the line between past and present, fiction and reality, in his attempt to outrun the unknown. “Please come to Skogskyrkogården tomorrow at 2. I have a story I want to tell you.” Lena agrees to Christoph's out-of-the-blue request, though the two have never met. In Stockholm's Woodland Cemetery, he tells her his story, which is also somehow hers. Twenty years before, he loved a woman named Magdalena—an actress like Lena, with her looks, her personality, her past. Their breakup inspired him to write his first novel, about the time they were together, and in its scenes Lena recognizes the uncanny, intimate details of her own relationship with an aspiring writer, Chris. Is it possible that she and Chris are living the same lives as Magdalena and Christoph two decades apart? Are they headed towards the same scripted separation? Or, in the fever of writing, has Christoph lost track of what is real and what is imagined? In this subtle, kaleidoscopic tale, Peter Stamm exposes a fundamental human yearning: to beat life's mysteries by forcing answers on questions that have yet to be fully asked.