Translated from Sanskrit by Arshia SattarPublished by Penguin, 1996, 320 pages. The original stories were written between 1063 to 1081. Kathasaritsagara can be translated as the “ocean of the sea of stories”. This is the mother lode of stories, composed by Somadeva around 1070 CE for the Kashmiri queen, Suryavati. But many of these had …
Month: May 2017
The Pledge: Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Translated from German by Joel AgeePublished by University of Chicago Press / Pushkin Vertigo, 1959, 192 pages. Original version published in 1958. The book starts with the narrator travelling to Chur in Switzerland to give a lecture on the art of writing detective stories. The talk is not a success, and the writer meets Dr. …
Of Love and Other Demons: Gabriel García Márquez
Published by Penguin / Vintage, 1995, 160 pages. Original version published in 1994.Translated from Spanish by Edith GrossmanReview by Thomas Peak Once, under a stifling October sun, Gabriel García Márquez, the great Latin American writer, observed the unceremonious wrenching open of a centuries-old tomb. As the sacred stones were smashed into rubble, bundles of luminescent golden …
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On Writing—A Memoir of the Craft: Stephen King
Published by Scribner, 2000, 320 pages. This book on writing starts with two contradictory epigraphs: “Honesty is the best policy” and “Liars prosper”. Good fiction is a mix of the two. Writers invent, but also draw upon what they know. This book is far more than a primer on writing well. Stephen King starts and …
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