Showing results for "Spiders" in Literary Fiction

Originally published in 1955, Paul Bowles’s remarkable novel set in Fez, Morocco, during the last days of the French colonial empire, is an expansive piece of writing—vintage Bowles The dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures, recurrent...

Ellis is obsessed with the spiders that inhabit the crumbling house where he lives with his dad, his older sister and Great-Aunt Mafi - and by a need to find out more about his mother, whose death overshadows the family's otherwise happy existence. He is a sensitive soul - awkward and out of place most of the time but funny, too, and with an embarrassing habit of speaking his thoughts aloud, whatever the company.

In the 1950s, the street boys of Singapore caught and bet on their wrestling spiders, gaining not only money but also power and prestige as they won. Backgrounded against age-old vices, superstitions, urban legends, as well as a dangerous world of youth gangs and a tumultuous period in Singapore's history, Spider Boys is a moving and sensual story that draws the listener in as if by a beguiling, hypnotic force, alternating arousing and repelling him.

The Spider King's Daughter is a modern-day Romeo and Juliet set against the backdrop of a changing Lagos, a city torn between tradition and modernity, corruption and truth, love and family loyalty. Seventeen-year-old Abike Johnson is the favourite child of her wealthy father. She lives in a sprawling mansion in Lagos, protected by armed guards and ferried everywhere in a huge black jeep. But being her father's favourite comes with uncomfortable duties, and she is often lonely behind the high walls.

Chosen by Nelson Mandela, this extraordinary story features celebrity narration and celebrates the rich oral tradition of African folktalkes. Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales is an extraordinary audiobook featuring Gillian Anderson, Benjamin Bratt, LeVar Burton, Ricardo Chavira, Don...

The narrator is in deep sorrow, mourning his lost love, and is slowly sinking into despair when he is visited by a talking raven from whom he seeks comfort and hope, but whose only utterance is a single portentous word - "nevermore."