“Sudden Fiction International is even better than its predecessor. It's a fine teaching tool, a good gift, it's Around-the-World-in-Sixty-Stories, with many surprises, new friends, old friends, almost every stop a brief wonder in itself.” —Alan Cheuse
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Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Shapard and Thomas ( Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories ) gather 60 highly readable, very brief tales from 32 countries, including the U.S. In an astute introduction, Charles Baxter ( First Light ) points out that the shortest stories often have "to do with a sudden crisis, in which the character does not act so much as react . . . . When a character reacts, the situation is larger and more powerful than that character is." In Colette's "The Other Wife," a married couple enters a restaurant, where the man steers his wife away from a table occupied by his ex-wife; in "One of These Days," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a mayor in a totalitarian regime demands to have an infected tooth pulled, threatening to shoot the dentist if he refuses, and the dentist proceeds without anesthesia, saying, "Now you'll pay for our twenty dead men." Many writers here (e.g., Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Jorge Luis Borges) are widely published; others, such as Poland's Slawomir Mrozek and India's Krishnan Varma, present foreign cultures in distinctive styles that invite further attention.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
A follow-up to Sudden Fiction ( LJ 11/1/86), this anthology presents an enticing smorgasbord of 60 short-short stories (none longer than five pages) from every continent, including work from such rarely represented countries as Botswana, Guatemala, Cyprus, and Pakistan. Although a quarter of the stories are from the United States, where the short-short form now flourishes, the catalog of international writers is impressive: Cortazar, Kawabata, Boll, Colette, Dinesen, Gordimer, Garcia Marquez, Babal, Calvino, and splendid lesser-knowns such as Krishnan Varma. Not all these exotic delights will suit every palate--the stories range from realism to absurdist fantasy, poetic lyric to political allegory--but one is always left hungry enough to try another. The collection also includes commentaries by the writers and translators and is perhaps even better than the earlier book.
-Peter Bricklebank, City Coll.,
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
-Peter Bricklebank, City Coll.,
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This anthology is an excellent source for learning about various cultures and also for pure entertainment. I have used this as a text in a graduate level course. The stories have universal themes and so can be savored by all. Some are culturally specific whereas others are about one culture. Many are slice of life stories..........Enjoy!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A great book for those with short attention spans, short story writers (or aspiring short story writers), and those who want to see the variety of short shorts available. These stories are short but they have a sharp impact on the reader. The Afternotes section provides extra information about the author, which is often not included in short story collections. It also provides interviews with the authors on their inspiration for the story of theirs included in this volume and occasional interviews with translators on how they set about getting the most accurate translation of the story.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By "stbob"
Format:Paperback
This is a great book to buy for someone who doesn't have the patience to read. There are some brilliant works in here, some of them only a few pages long. Leave it in the bathroom or somewhere else you have a captive audience. You just might turn someone on to reading.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
"If that won't work, there are other ways."
For teachers:
Being a teacher, I often struggle to find interesting stories for my students to read that are also sufficiently complex and not too long. Read more
Being a teacher, I often struggle to find interesting stories for my students to read that are also sufficiently complex and not too long. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Lazar
1.0 out of 5 stars
Hate it
These stories are convoluted, confusing and and over educated attempt to tell stories that really have a very limited audience. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Deangela S. Chastain
5.0 out of 5 stars
FLASHES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
What I like about this flash anthology is that it gives the reader flashes from authors living in different parts of the world, not just Americans. Read more
Published on July 28, 2010 by Salvatore Buttaci
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too many stories
A long time ago when I watched too many stand up comedians to remember them all, I heard one say that he watched MTV because everything is over in three minutes. Read more
Published on April 11, 2009 by Tim Lieder
4.0 out of 5 stars
eclectic
From an objective standpoint, this is a good collection, but for some reason ... reading it was not pleasurable. Read more
Published on August 30, 2006 by sparky_magic_rainbow
5.0 out of 5 stars
International Lightning Bottled Up
~~It's a great book to have. You can read it on the subway and chew on a few stories in one transit, or just scan the beginnings and look for what catches your eye, or you can curl... Read more
Published on December 8, 2003 by Ralph-Michael
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for an aspiring writer
I used this for a class in creative writing. Anytime I got writers block I would read a few of the stories in Sudden Fiction. Read more
Published on July 18, 2002 by Jay
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fine and comprehensive anthology
This is priceless collection of very short stories from all over the world.In this cosmopolitan range of stories many known authors such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez,Julio... Read more
Published on July 17, 2002 by asadollah amraee
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