Synopses & Reviews
Rarely have world writers of such variety and distinction appeared together in the same anthology. Their stories capture the range of emotions and situations of our human universe: tragedy, comedy, fantasy, satire, dramas of sexual love and of war in different continents and cultures. They are not about HIV / AIDS. But all twenty-one writers have given their stories--chosen by themselves as representing some of the best of their lifetime work as storytellers--without any fee or royalty.
Telling Tales is being published in more than twelve countries. The publisher's profits from the sales of this book will go to HIV / AIDS preventive education and for medical treatment for people living with the suffering this pandemic infection brings to our contemporary world. So when you buy this unique anthology of renowned storytellers as a gift or for your own reading pleasure, you are also making a gift to combat the plague of our new millennium.
Nadine Gordimer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, is the author of fourteen novels, nine volumes of stories, and three nonfiction collections. She lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. This anthology is a literary part of a worldwide effort to raise money for fighting HIV/AIDS.
Rarely have world writers of such variety and distinction appeared together in the same anthology. Their stories capture the range of emotions and situations of our human universe: tragedy, comedy, fantasy, satire, dramas of sexual love and of war in different continents and cultures. These tales are not about HIV/AIDS. But all twenty-one writers have given their storieschosen by themselves as representing some of the best of their lifetime work as storytellerswithout any fee or royalty.
Telling Tales is published in more than twelve countries. The publishers' profits from the sales of this book go to HIV/AIDS preventive education, and for medical treatment for people living with the suffering this pandemic infection brings to our contemporary world. This unique collection of renowned storytellers is much more than a gathering of great literature; it is a gift to combat the plague of our new millennium.
"A stellar roster, including five NobelistsGordimer, Grass, Oe, Marquez, and Saramagooffers 21 stories in a fundraising effort for HIV and AIDS in southern Africa."Kirkus Reviews
"The 21 stellar writers in this international short-story collection include five Nobel winners. All the stories were chosen by the writers themselves and contributed without any fee, and all profits go to fight HIV-AIDS in southern Africa. The stories are not about AIDS, but several are about war and about dying. In Njabulo Ndbele's 'Death of a Son,' parents fight to get their child's body from the apartheid police. 'The Ultimate Safari,' by Gordimer, who edited the anthology, is a searing, unforgettable account of a desperate refugee child hiding from the fancy tourists in a famous game park. In contrast, Woody Allen has contributed his hilarious New Yorker piece lampooning the financier whose kid was turned down by a prestigious Manhattan preschool. There are also fine stories by Margaret Atwood, Hanef Kureishi, Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, and more."Booklist
"A stellar roster, including five NobelistsGordimer, Grass, Oe, Marquez, and Saramagooffers 21 stories in a fundraising effort for HIV and AIDS in southern Africa. Chinua Achebe's 'Sugar Baby' is a razor-edged retrospective look at one man's inability to adjust to deprivation in the midst of protracted war. Margaret Atwood's stunning 'The Age of Lead' juxtaposes the narrator's watching news reports about a sailor frozen on an ill-fated Arctic expedition with memories of her lifelong friend, bonded since their teens by a desire for a 'life without consequences.' Now, Vincent is dead at 43 of 'a mutated virus that didn't even have a name yet'the consequence of 'things you don't even know you've done.' In the powerful 'The Ultimate Safari,' Gordimer's narrator, a young girl in Mozambique whose mother has disappeared and whose father is in the war, flees with her grandparents. They walk for days through Kruger Park, 'a kind of whole country of animalselephants, lions, jackals, hyenas, hippos, crocodiles'to a refugee camp, where they live for more than two years, so long that the grandmother, whose husband disappeared on the trek, feels there is no home to return to. 'Bulldog,' Arthur Miller's straightforward Brooklyn coming-of-age story, revolves around a seductive woman selling puppies, while Njabule S. Ndebele's heartbreaking 'Death of a Son' chronicles the two weeks it takes for a young Johannesburg couple to get back their child's body, killed when soldiers and police patrolling the township began shooting. Saramago's 'The Centaur' is the beautifully wrought parable of the last Centaur to survive, wandering for centuries until there is no longer a wilderness to hide in. John Updike's ponderous 'The Journey to the Dead,' about a man's self-serving and increasingly awkward visits to a dying woman who was his ex-wife's best friend, is one of the few clinkers. By its nature more somber than not, a variety of voices with important stories."Kirkus Reviews
Review
"A stellar roster, including five Nobelists Gordimer, Grass, Oe, Marquez, and Saramago....By its nature more somber than not, a variety of voices with important stories." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Gordimer must have realized she risked summoning a volume that was either mirthlessly monotone or else themelessly uncentred some of its parts greater than the whole. How delighted she must have been when what began to emerge was something unexpectedly uplifting: a soulful, searching collection which, while organized predictably along the human axes of sex and death, is nevertheless joyful even, at times, hilarious." Kelly Grovier, The Times Literary Supplement (read the entire Times Literary Supplement review)
Synopsis
An extraordinary story collection selected by Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer, from which all proceeds will be donated to the fight against AIDS
Rarely have writers of such variety and distinction appeared together in the same anthology. Their stories capture the range of emotions and situations of our human universe: tragedy, comedy, fantasy, satire, dramas of sexual love and of war in different continents and cultures. They are not about HIV / AIDS. But all twenty-one writers have given their stories--chosen by themselves as representing some of the best of their lifetime work as storytellers--without any fee or royalty. This collection includes five Nobel Prize winners: Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jose Saramago, Kenzaburo Oe, and Gunter Grass; along with other world-class writers such as Arthur Miller, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Attwood, Chinua Achebe, and Susan Sontag.
Telling Tales is being published in more than twelve countries. The publisher's profits from the sales of this book will go to HIV / AIDS preventive education and for medical treatment for people living with the suffering this pandemic infection brings to our contemporary world. So when you buy this unique anthology of renowned storytellers as a gift or for your own reading pleasure, you are also making a gift to combat the plague of our new millennium.
Synopsis
Rarely have world writers of such variety and distinction appeared together in the same anthology. Their stories capture the range of emotions and situations of our human universe: tragedy, comedy, fantasy, satire, dramas of sexual love and of war in different continents and cultures. They are not about HIV / AIDS. But all twenty-one writers have given their stories chosen by themselves as representing some of the best of their lifetime work as storytellers without any fee or royalty.
Telling Tales is being published in more than twelve countries. The publisher's profits from the sales of this book will go to HIV / AIDS preventive education and for medical treatment for people living with the suffering this pandemic infection brings to our contemporary world. So when you buy this unique anthology of renowned storytellers as a gift or for your own reading pleasure, you are also making a gift to combat the plague of our new millennium.
Synopsis
Rarely have world writers of such variety and distinction appeared together in the same anthology. Their stories capture the range of emotions and situations of our human universe: tragedy, comedy, fantasy, satire, dramas of sexual love and of war in different continents and cultures. They are not about HIV / AIDS. But all twenty-one writers have given their stories--chosen by themselves as representing some of the best of their lifetime work as storytellers--without any fee or royalty.
Telling Tales is being published in more than twelve countries. The publisher's profits from the sales of this book will go to HIV / AIDS preventive education and for medical treatment for people living with the suffering this pandemic infection brings to our contemporary world. So when you buy this unique anthology of renowned storytellers as a gift or for your own reading pleasure, you are also making a gift to combat the plague of our new millennium.
About the Author
Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014), the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in a small South African town. Her first book, a collection of stories, was published when she was in her early twenties. Her ten books of stories include Something Out There (1984), and Jump and Other Stories (1991). Her novels include The Lying Days (1953), A World of Strangers (1958), Occasion for Loving (1963), The Late Bourgeois World (1966), A Guest of Honour (1971), The Conservationist (1975), Burgers Daughter (1979), Julys People (1981), A Sport of Nature (1987), My Sons Story (1990), None to Accompany Me (1994), The House Gun (1998), The Pickup (2001), Get a Life (2005), and No Time Like the Present (2012). A World of Strangers, The Late Bourgeois World, and Burgers Daughter were originally banned in South Africa. She published three books of literary and political essays: The Essential Gesture (1988); Writing and Being (1995), the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures she gave at Harvard in 1994; and Living in Hope and History (1999).Ms. Gordimer was a vice president of PEN International and an executive member of the Congress of South African Writers. She was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in Great Britain and an honorary member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was also a Commandeur deOrdre des Arts et des Lettres (France). She held fourteen honorary degrees from universities including Harvard, Yale, Smith College, the New School for Social Research, City College of New York, the University of Leuven in Belgium, Oxford University, and Cambridge University.Ms. Gordimer won numerous literary awards, including the Booker Prize for The Conservationist, both internationally and in South Africa.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Bulldog by Arthur Miller
The Centaur by José Saramago
Down the Quiet Street by Es'kia Mphahlele
The Firebird's Nest by Salman Rushdie
Cell Phone by Ingo Schulze
Death Constant Beyond Love by Gabriel García Márquez
The Age of Lead by Margaret Atwood
Witnesses of an Era by Günter Grass
The Journey to the Dead by John Updike
Sugar Baby by Chinua Achebe
The Way of the Wind by Amos Oz
Warm Dogs by Paul Theroux
The Ass and The Ox by Michel Tournier
Death of a Son by Njabulo S. Ndebele
The Letter Scene by Susan Sontag
To Have Been by Claudio Magris
A Meeting, At Last by Hanif Kureishi
Associations in Blue by Christa Wolf
The Rejection by Woody Allen
The Ultimate Safari by Nadine Gordimer
Abandoned Children of This Planet by Kenzaburo Oe
The Contributors
Source Notes