Brief Encounters
52 books in this series
The English Teacher
A powerful, compassionate novella about one man's search for meaning in the wake of losing his greatest source of joy, his wife.
Krishna, an English teacher in the town of Malgudi, is nagged by the feeling he's doing the wrong work. His days are given purpose by his relationship with his family, with his wife and young daughter, who welcome him home from school every afternoon. Yet when his wife dies suddenly, Krishna faces a reckoning of existential proportions, as he begins a quest for a life worth living.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.
Krishna, an English teacher in the town of Malgudi, is nagged by the feeling he's doing the wrong work. His days are given purpose by his relationship with his family, with his wife and young daughter, who welcome him home from school every afternoon. Yet when his wife dies suddenly, Krishna faces a reckoning of existential proportions, as he begins a quest for a life worth living.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.
Fighters & Martyrs
In these stories of rebellion and sacrifice, ordinary lives burn with extraordinary courage
Drawn from Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's collection Secret Lives and Other Stories this new selection gathers his most powerful tales of struggle and resilience. From fighters taking up arms against colonial rule to martyrs confronting impossible choices, these stories testify to the cost of freedom and the endurance of the human spirit.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Drawn from Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's collection Secret Lives and Other Stories this new selection gathers his most powerful tales of struggle and resilience. From fighters taking up arms against colonial rule to martyrs confronting impossible choices, these stories testify to the cost of freedom and the endurance of the human spirit.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Fire On The Mountain
Vivid and alive, this powerful novella about one woman's belated rebellion against the powers that be is Anita Desai at her finest.
Nanda Kaul has chosen to spend her final years alone in the tranquil mountains. But her solitude is broken when her strange and secretive great-grand-daughter comes to stay. Through the long hot summer months, hidden dependencies and old wounds are uncovered, until tragedy seems as inevitable as a forest fire on the mountainside.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Nanda Kaul has chosen to spend her final years alone in the tranquil mountains. But her solitude is broken when her strange and secretive great-grand-daughter comes to stay. Through the long hot summer months, hidden dependencies and old wounds are uncovered, until tragedy seems as inevitable as a forest fire on the mountainside.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
First Light
At once a gripping thriller and a heartbreaking elegy, this is Toni Cade Bambara's powerful final testament, a hymn to Atlanta's missing children.
Zala Spencer is barely surviving on the margins of Atlanta's booming economy when she awakens one summer's morning in 1980 to find her teenage son, Sonny, has disappeared. Edited by Toni Morrison as part of Bambara's final novel, Those Bones Are Not My Child, this slim masterpiece leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Zala Spencer is barely surviving on the margins of Atlanta's booming economy when she awakens one summer's morning in 1980 to find her teenage son, Sonny, has disappeared. Edited by Toni Morrison as part of Bambara's final novel, Those Bones Are Not My Child, this slim masterpiece leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days