Published by Motifs / Le Serpent à Plumes, 1994, 177 pages. Published in English as The Land without Shadows, University of Virginia Press, 2005. Translated from French by Jeanne Garane. A man forgets his own language and finds himself speaking Creole; a young woman runs away from her village to escape an arranged marriage to …
Category: Short stories
Amanat—Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan: Edited by Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega
Translated from Kazakh and Russian by Zaure Batayeva, Shelley Fairweather-Vega and Sam BreazealePublished by Gaudy Boy, 2022, 267 pages. This collection of women’s stories from Kazakhstan is the first of its kind. The Kazakh word “amanat” has many meanings, as the translators explain in their introduction. It is “a promise entwined with hope for the …
The Burning Bush Women: Cherie Jones
Published by Peepal Tree, 2004, 158 pages. “We live by our hair.“It never lies.“We welcome rain when our plaits undo of their own volition and retreat into themselves. We are pregnant when our hair turns the colour of beetroot and are about to die when it lies still against our scalps and becomes straight and …
Brer Rabbit Retold: Arthur Flowers, illustrated by Jagdish Chitara
Published by Tara Books, 2017, 74 pages. In the late 1800s, Joel Chandler Harris collected stories told by slaves in the southern United States, which he later published. In his version, the stories are told to a little white boy by Uncle Remus, a genial, happy slave, who recounts the adventures of Brer Rabbit, Brer …
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Word Beads—Short Stories: Slavko Milekić
Published by Graphic and Photo Studio Kaligram, 2019, 103 pages. A physician has a heart attack; a man remembers his parent’s relationship while composing a foreword to his father’s unpublished manuscript; and a couple in a foreign country find a way to throw a birthday party for their child although they have very little money. …
Trout, Belly Up: Rodrigo Fuentes
Translated from Spanish by Ellen JonesPublished by Charco Press, 2019, 97 pages. Original version published in 2017. A man put in charge of a trout farm lets his emotions get the better of him; a farmer stands up to armed men; and a man’s friend calls in his debt, forcing the man to sell his …
The Travelling Bag and Other Ghostly Stories: Susan Hill
Published by Profile Books, 2016, 288 pages. An act of charity that goes horribly wrong, a travelling bag that when opened leads to a man’s death, a ghostly boy that only his friend can see, a mysterious co-worker with a strange smell, and a misguided attempt to raise the dead. These are the five stories …
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Nostalgia: Mircea Cărtărescu
Translated from Romanian by Julian SemilianPublished by Penguin and New Directions, 2005, 332 pages. Original version published in 1989. This collection of three short stories and two novellas, set mainly in Bucharest, was written during Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime and published in 1989, the year his regime fell. Nostalgia was originally published under the title Visul …
Mother’s Beloved—Stories from Laos: Outhine Bounyavong
Translated from Lao by Bounheng Inversin, Roger Rumpf, Jacqui Chagnon, Thipason Phimviengkham and William GallowayPublished by University of Washington Press, 1999, 198 pages. A poor cobbler finds a way to make his contribution to his country's war effort; a young man offers strangers lifts on his bicycle; and a young woman tries to return a …
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Ghost Stories: M.R. James
Published by Penguin and Oxford University Press, 1931, 361 pages. “I was conscious of a most horrible smell of mould and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own...”The Treasure of Abbot Thomas M.R. James is one of the best—if not the best—ghost story writer in the English language. Born in 1862, he …
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