Homesick For Another World
Bettering Myself “Dear Principal Kishka,” I wrote. “Thank you for letting me teach at your school. Please throw away the sleeping bag in the cardboard box in the back of my classroom. I have to resign for personal reasons. Just so you know, I’ve been fudging the state...
Love In The Time Of Cholera
The years of immobilized waiting, of hoping for good luck, were behind him, but on the horizon he could see nothing more than the unfathomable sea of imaginary illnesses, the drop-by-drop urinations of sleepless nights, the daily death at twilight. He thought that all the moments in the day, which had once been his allies and sworn accomplices, were beginning to conspire against him.
A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush
The river was quite shallow but running very fast. We decided to cross it. It was a hazardous operation. The water was only thigh deep but the current was immensely strong and the bottom was formed of stones the size of footballs slippery with weeds. Halfway across we...
Friends Within The Darkness
I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
The Dispossessed
Atro had once explained to him how this was managed, how the sergeants could give the privates orders, how the lieutenants could give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the captains… and so on and so on up to the generals, who could give everyone else orders and need take them from none, except the commander in chief. Shevek had listened with incredulous disgust. “You call that organization?” he had inquired. “You even call it discipline? But it is neither. It is a coercive mechanism of extraordinary inefficiency