Edmond L. Volpe (1922–2007)

An excellent collection of short stories by 26 Nobel Prize Winners selected from among their finest work in this format. I found it a highly readable and enjoyable way to be introduced to the writings of some previously obscure (at least to me) literary greats such as Bjornsterne Bjornsen, Maurice Maeterlink, Gerhart Hauptmann, Wladyslaw Reymont, Roger Martin du Gard and Johannes V. Jensen. It was also my first time to read something by Anatole France, Grazia Deledda, Luigi Pirandello, and Par Lagerkvist. According to the editors, the stories were chosen to represent the literary style of the period in which the author wrote, and thus overall traces the shift in style over some 60-year period. Some featured stories are now not easily accessible.

It's interesting to note that the stories by the earlier winners (except Rudyard Kipling) had a dominantly religious theme to them -- of poor individuals or communities of people with simple yet profound faith, and an almost mystic quality attributed to nature. The mood is mostly melancholic, the struggle to live hard and sometimes futile or violent. The later writers wrote on more varied subjects, and humour starts to peep through some of the writing. I found most memorable the following stories: The Procurator of Judea by Anatole France, The Crucifixion of the Outcast by William Butler Yeats, The Massacre of the Innocents by Maurice Maeterlinck, and The Guest by Albert Camus. Highly recommended.… (más)

These tend towards the bleak and existential, which isn't what I usually look for in novels, but I liked a good deal of these. I found Wright's "The Man who Lived Underground" the best of the lot (a very intense sensory experience addressing racial issues and those of humanity in general with manic intelligence and desperate fire), closely followed by Mann's "Mario and the Magician" (a smashing political allegory), Konrad's classic "Heart of Darkness" and Kafka's classic "Metamorphosis". Camus' "The Stranger" is the weakest (very unconvincing moral discussion). Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo's "Abel Sanchez" kicks itself, that is, fails to deliver the philosophical punch. One thinks, at the end, reading the commentary, "THAT's what he intended?!" Henry James' "Beast in the Jungle" has a very interesting premise to recommend it, but it's far from his best. "The Death of Ivan Illytch" was, I suspect, poorly translated here. It reads very blandly and the climax doesn't make much of a sound.… (más)