Word: tales
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...realist, recording the lives of middle- and lower-class Cairenes, faithfully and fearlessly registering both the changes that modernity wreaked on Cairo and the fabric of traditional Islamic life that resisted those changes. He wrote in elaborate classical Arabic, but his strength was as a mesmerizing tale-spinner. He's best known for his celebrated Cairo trilogy - Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street - which follows the fortunes of a merchant family not unlike his own through three tumultuous generations...
...American players to revive the game's popularity. Sure, a hometown surprise is always possible in Queens. Slumping Andy Roddick took an Open tune-up tournament in Cincinnati, Ohio; Harvard man James Blake, ranked fifth in the world, is a serious threat; and after Andre Agassi's fairy-tale romp to last year's final, you can't discount the 36-year-old in the last tournament of his career. But a stunning American meltdown at Wimby--for the first time in nearly a century, no U.S. man or woman reached the quarterfinals--underscored the fact that U.S. tennis...
...made it to last year's U.S. Open final. Do you have one more fairy-tale...
...tall tales you might hear while holidaying in Australia-a land whose residents famously love to regale visitors with made-up stories-perhaps the tallest of all will be the one you hear in Murchison Station House, a 200,000-hectare sheep farm in the Western Australian outback. There you will be told that everything you see once belonged to Mukarram Jah, the eighth Nizam of Hyderabad, and that it was all seized when he failed to pay his debts. You may be inclined to laugh when you hear this. How could Jah, the grandest of Indian kings, inheritor...
...forgave us both our greed because he was endlessly amused by human folly, particularly his friends'. He would repeat tales of indiscretions and infidelities with rogueish, non-judgmental relish. He could even rejoice in another's meanness-a quality he detested-but only if it was of such spectacular proportions that it made a good story. Raconteur is a word that normally provokes a shiver of dread, but you could listen to Len all night. I never heard him stumble over a name or punchline, even when by rights he should have been stumbling over the furniture. And every tale...