Word: fictions
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...dazzled by the richness of the world that I think fiction is not quite catching it," V.S. Naipaul said some years ago. The "it," his readers will recognize, is principally the postcolonial world, its tormented past and upheavals that Naipaul has spent most of his career chronicling. It is also what members of the Swedish Academy had in mind when they awarded him this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Naipaul's novels and reportage have helped shape our perceptions of places we hear about only when they are hit by civil wars and famines. His oblique stories about...
...peek back there once or twice. People are going to want to reassure themselves that the gifted but infamous Morris has not made up some of his nicely observed details, and not just because so much of this book has the hurtling pace and alert eye of good fiction. So did Morris' Pulitzer prizewinning first volume, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. That account was as robust and vivid as Teddy himself--probably the last President to have knifed a cougar...
Some of Lydia Davis' stories are shorter than this review, but they are funnier, smarter, and will prove more memorable. In deadpan prose, Davis turns philosophical snippets into fiction, with moving results. It is rare for a writer to challenge the tradition of storytelling and still be a pleasure to read. Davis' stories are as clear as children's books and somehow inevitable, as if she has written down what we were all on the verge of thinking ourselves...
...idiosyncracies are well in keeping with the temple's past. "Shaolin monks have always adapted themselves to the legend that surrounds them," he says. "Many of the practices for which Shaolin is now famous were developed as a direct response to the way the monks had been portrayed in fiction and drama." If life at the Shaolin Temple has long imitated art, Yan Ming may be writing its newest chapter. Jet Li's next movie, rumor has it, is called Manhattan Monk...
...into the history of speculative fiction,” he says, referring to the array of Jules Verne novels displayed in his bookcase. “It’s prophetic. It’s just fascinating. People save these things for a reason...