Literature Research

Provides critical overviews of short stories from all cultures and time periods. Includes discussions of plot, characters, themes and structure as well as the story's cultural and historical significance.

The Best American Short Stories is the longest running and best-selling series of short fiction in the country. For the centennial celebration of this beloved annual series, master of the form Lorrie Moore selects forty stories from the more than two thousand that were published in previous editions. Series editor Heidi Pitlor recounts behind-the-scenes anecdotes and examines, decade by decade, the trends captured over a hundred years. Together, the stories and commentary offer an extraordinary guided tour through a century of literature with what Moore calls "all its wildnesses of character and voice." These forty stories represent their eras but also stand the test of time.

Attesting to the depth, range, and continued popularity of short fiction, this collection includes seventy-eight contributors from thirty-five countries. The Art of the Story combines the best of the established masters as well as the fresh, new voices of writers whose work has seldom been translated into English.

This anthology of 20 stories are from all over Africa, grouped geographically into four different sections - West, East, North and Southern Africa.

Capturing the diversity of African writing from across the continent, this important  anthology draws together well-established authors and the best of new writers. Blending the supernatural and the secular, the market-place and the shrine, this anthology gives the reader a taste of the full range of African literary styles.

Written originally in English, Portuguese, and French, the stories take us from colonial to post-colonial Africa, from civil war to struggles with apartheid and AIDS, to a new South Africa of cellular phones and middle-class angst. The collection includes detailed biographical notes and, wherever possible, textual commentaries by the writers themselves."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused is a showcase for 20 writers from the new literary generation in China. Hard-core realism, experimental prose, and black humor; exoticism and eroticism;shocking tales of brutality, tender evocations of love, and engrossing mysteries all coexist in an anthology that spans nearly a decade, ten years that have witnessed a dizzying array of societal and political changes. Almost all of the stories appear in English translation for the first time.

A heartwarming collection of short stories filled with larger-than-life characters and the seemingly impossible challenges they face. You will be captivated by these fictional depictions of everyday Pakistanis who struggle with poverty, violence, corruption and abuse, yet rise from the ashes stronger and more enduring.

Writers of South Asian descent have been garnering more and more success, acclaim, and attention. Story-Wallah gathers the finest South Asian voices in fiction for the first time in a single volume.

Linda Schermer Raphael and Marc Lee Raphael have collected twenty-six short stories that tell of the human toll of the Holocaust on those who survived its horrors, as well as later generations touched by its memory. The stories are framed by discussion of the current debate about who owns the Holocaust and who is entitled to speak about it.