Showing results for "The General" in Short Stories

Private McAuslan, J.—the Dirtiest Soldier in the World (alias the Tartan Caliban)—demonstrates his unfitness for military service in this first volume of stories of life in a Scottish regiment. Unkempt, ungainly and unwashed, civilian listeners may regard him with shocked disbelief. But generations of ex-servicemen have hailed him with delight as a familiar friend—because every old soldier can remember a McAuslan! 

Nearly forty years after the publication of his first story, "The Wrath of Purple," in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, Howard Fast returned to the genre with a set of nine supremely entertaining tales. In this collection, a Vietnam general shoots down what appears to be an angel, a man sells his soul to the devil for a copy of the next day's Wall Street Journal, and a group of alien beings bestow a mouse with human thought and emotion.

An unwanted daughter is betrothed to a reclusive man. She arrives at his beautiful home on a lonely island, to find there is no husband, only a forbidding housekeeper. A mysterious locked door; an oddly-behaved cat; perhaps she didn't come here to be a bride...

La narrativa se desarrolla en un ambiente de conflictos políticos y luchas de poder, donde la esposa del general se convierte en una figura central, no solo por su posición, sino también por su inteligencia y habilidad para navegar en un mundo dominado por hombres. Maugham teje una trama donde el amor, la lealtad y la traición juegan roles cruciales, revelando las complejas dinámicas de las relaciones humanas.

«… Y ahora me doy cuenta que el verdadero antecedente de Cien años de soledad es La hojarasca, y en el camino está El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, están los cuentos de Los funerales de Mamá Grande y está La mala hora», Gabriel García Márquez. ¿Dónde está el germen de Macondo?...