كتاب “انتحار فاشل” عبارة عن مجموعة قصصية متنوعة تجمع ما بين القصة الساخرة، الاجتماعية، الرعب، وحتى القصص المبنية على أحداث حقيقية، يلعب “أحمد رمضان” فى هذه المجموعة ببراعة شديدة على وتر الأفكار المختلفة والنهايات المفاجئة، حتى فى القصص التى تبدو أفكارها مألوفة تأتى المعالجة شديدة التميز والنهاية مخالفة تماماً للتوقعات تضيف أبعاداً أكثر عمقاً للعمل.
كان الجميع يعلم أنه عصبى .. هذه ليست المشكلة، المشكلة أنه كان يعترف بهذا، كان يعترف أنه عصبى، سريع الاستثارة، ومندفع؛ لكنه لم يحاول تغيير ذلك أبداً، كان ينتابه الغضب ويندفع فى السباب كالسيل العارم لأتفه الأسباب، وأحيانا بدون أسباب تذكر، يفقد أعصابه بسهولة فيثور دون أن يبالى بالعواقب، برميل من البارود قابل للاشتعال فى أى لحظة كما يحلو للبعض أن يصفه، تلك كانت طبيعته المميزة، وهكذا مضت حياته، مشاكل له .. ومأساة للآخرين ممن أوقعهم حظهم العاثر فى دائرة التعامل معه...
جيرانه يخشون الاقتراب منه بعد أن علمتهم التجارب أن الاحتكاك به ينتهى دوما بنتائج وخيمة، زملاءه فى العمل يواصلون الشكوى منه ، وأصدقاءه يتناقصون تدريجياً.. فماذا سيفعل فى حياته؟ وما هى المشاكل التى ستواجهه؟ وماذا سيواجه؟ .
‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.’
First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny’ and ‘Zooey’ offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.
Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey’, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.
Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.
DeDaumier-Smith's Blue Period, Teddy, and A Perfect Day for Bananafish are among the nine works in a collection of Salinger's perceptive and realistic short stories
This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes.
The tales told by Shahrazad over a thousand and one nights to delay her execution by the vengeful King Shahriyar have become among the most popular in both Eastern and Western literature, as recounted by Sir Francis Burton. From the epic adventures of "Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp" to the farcical "Young Woman and her Five Lovers" and the social criticism of "The Tale of the Hunchback", the stories depict a fabulous world of all-powerful sorcerers, jinns imprisoned in bottles and enchanting princesses. But despite their imaginative extravagance, the Tales are anchored to everyday life by their realism, providing a full and intimate record of medieval Islam.'
Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.
'I regret to see that my book has turned out un fiasco solenne.' James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth: to alter it in any way would 'retard the course of civilisation in Ireland'.
Joyce's aim was to tell the truth — to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century and by rejecting euphemism, reveal to the Irish the unromantic reality the recognition of which would lead to the spiritual liberation of the country.
Each of the fifteen stories offers a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Dubliners — a death, an encounter, an opportunity not taken, a memory rekindled — and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation.
A gargantuan, mind-altering tragi-comedy about the Pursuit of Happiness in America.
Set in an addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in recent fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to so dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are.
Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant, uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human—and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do.
Cannery Row is a book without much of a plot. Rather, it is an attempt to capture the feeling and people of a place, the cannery district of Monterey, California, which is populated by a mix of those down on their luck and those who choose for other reasons not to live "up the hill" in the more respectable area of town. The flow of the main plot is frequently interrupted by short vignettes that introduce us to various denizens of the Row, most of whom are not directly connected with the central story. These vignettes are often characterized by direct or indirect reference to extreme violence: suicides, corpses, and the cruelty of the natural world.
The "story" of Cannery Row follows the adventures of Mack and the boys, a group of unemployed yet resourceful men who inhabit a converted fish-meal shack on the edge of a vacant lot down on the Row.
Sweet Thursday is the sequel to Cannery Row.
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