Showing results by narrator "David Parker" in All Categories

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family. Life for the young Kafka and his passion for literature was often made an ordeal by his over-bearing and domineering entrepreneur of a father. His literary works are few in number but towering in influence. His masterpieces include ‘The Trial’, ‘The Metamorphosis’ as well as a number of short stories which reveal facets of humankind that truthfully could only be born from Kafka’s brain and pen.

Ivan Minchov Vazov was born on the 9th July 1850 (although that date is disputed) in the town of Sopot, in Bulgaria, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. After primary education at the local school he was sent to Kalofer to continue his studies and work as an assistant teacher. He later spent a short time in Plodiv where he began to write poetry. Fascinated by literature he abandoned work as an apprentice to move to Brăila, in Romania, where he lived with exiled revolutionaries and befriended the poet Hristo Botev.

Richard Barham Middleton was born on the 28th October 1882 in Staines, Middlesex. His education was primarily at Cranbrook School in Kent before he began work as a clerk, in 1901, at the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation in London. Middleton moved into rooms in Blackfriars and joined the New Bohemians club where his literary contacts grew. As an author he is most remembered for his short ghost stories.

It’s 2125 when a long-separated grandson suddenly arrives on his doorstep looking for answers. Max MacGyver retells their family story and secrets, revealing a century of challenges that they’ve faced. Journey to 2125 is one family’s touching story, across generations, of adventure, rivalry, loss, survival, and resilience.

In this volume our classic authors turn their words to the religion of Christianity. It’s a fascinating subject for our authors who can explore faith and belief in ways that we rarely subject ourselves to. Whatever your faith these stories raise questions and that are of interest to us all.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that are difficult to achieve elsewhere. In this volume we examine one of the great names from the past whose works invite life, rituals and the spirit world together to fashion dramatic and chilling unforeseen happenings.

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia. His family life was difficult; his father was strict and overbearing, but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’. Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’. His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.

With the talents on display the most difficult task is choosing only ten. Their virtuosity, their craft and ambition scare belie the difficulties that society places upon most women. Their words cannot be denied, their literary heritage is safe forever.

In this volume our classic authors conjure up all sorts of damnations and destructions in literary assaults testing our will to survive and our ingenuity to overcome situations where the outlook is bleak at best and the total extinction of us at worse.

Hector Hugh Munro, more familiarly known by his pen-name ‘Saki’, was born in what was then Akyab in British Burma on 18th December 1870. His father was an Inspector General for the Indian Imperial Police, and his mother the daughter of a Rear Admiral. After a stint working in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police, Saki decided to move to London to make a living as a writer. Initially he wrote as a journalist for a number of newspapers and magazines before attempting an historical study, ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’, whose real value lay in directing him to writing short stories instead.

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was born on 21st August in Oryol, Russia, to a middle-class family of Polish, Ukranian and Finnish ancestry. In 1898 his first short story ‘Bargamot and Garaska’, published in the ‘Kurier’ newspaper, caught the attention and friendship of Maxim Gorky. Andreyev now discarded any other career path apart from that of author. His classic story ‘Lazarus’ brilliantly tells the story of Christ’s disciple, forced to wander the earth for all time; it is both chilling and heart-breaking in its Russian setting.

In this series we listen to short stories that are NOT by perhaps the most well-known author of this type. But the many other rich talents in the volume may have treated the subject matter a little differently, or were perhaps just overlooked in the stampede to applaud the winner, but these authors are of equal merit.

In modern society writing a letter, on paper, is almost unheard of. We all scribble notes and reminders but very rarely compose our thoughts in lengthy prose for another person to read. In this volume our talented authors bring us a plethora of narratives that centre themselves on how vital a few lines are to characters navigating through the twists and turns of a story.

In this series we listen to short stories that are NOT by perhaps the most well-known author of this type. But the many other rich talents in the volume may have treated the subject matter a little differently, or were perhaps just overlooked in the stampede to applaud the winner, but these authors are of equal merit.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents whose time has now come again.

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society. In this volume we offer up a small selection of talents from the literary landscape of the Russian male author whose time has now come again.

The Russian novel has a reputation that is immense, both in narrative and in length. Unquestionably though the ideas, themes and characters make many novels rightly revered as world class, as icons of literature. The Russian short story is, in many respects, in a genre of its own. It is at its captivating best whether it’s an exploration of real-life experiences, through fantasy and fables and on to total absurdity.

Alfred Lichtenstein was born on the 23rd August 1889, in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, the son of a Jewish manufacturer. He grew up in Berlin before studying law at Erlangen in Bavaria. A writer in the Expressionist style his poems and stories are short but beautifully honed works. His tragically curtailed life allowed only a small part of his talents to rest with us. Undoubtedly a full life would have given the world a very gifted literary force.

Short stories have always been a sort of instant access into an author’s brain, their soul and heart. They can lift our lives into locations, people and experiences with a sweep of landscape, narration, feelings and emotions that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. In the vast Empire of the Russians literature was a way to exchange ideas, values and cultures. Yet each author, each story, each character is an individual example of a journey that, story by story, has transformed the glimmering arc of its literature.

The Russian novel has a reputation that is immense, both in narrative and in length. Unquestionably though the ideas, themes and characters make many novels rightly revered as world class, as icons of literature. Whilst Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov are a given in any Russian collection we also explore and include Andreyev, Korolenko, Turgenev, Blavatsky and many others to create a world rich and dense across a sprawling landscape of diverse people, riddled with the class and unfairness in perhaps some of the most turbulent times that Russia has ever experienced.