Life and Death and Other Legends and Stories by Henryk Sienkiewicz

Title: Life and Death and Other Legends and Stories
Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
Original Publication Date:2003
Pages: 42

Short and sweet, like life and death!

Life and Death and Other Legends and Stories is a compilation of short stories and musings of Henryk Sienkiewicz (pronounced SYEN-KYE-VITCH)*.

Life and Death: A Hindu Legend.
An allegory on how Brahma divided the world between the Plain of Life and the Plain of Death, respectively leaving its governance to Vishnu and Siva. There is wonderful philosophy at play here when Sienkiewicz crafted this story especially when he forwards that death is the proverbial rest our souls long for and that we need only to see beyond the veil of fear and pain. A veil which opens up to the Plain of Death.
Is He the Dearest One?
Tells us of motherly love for a fallen son.
A Legend of the Sea.
Recounts the voyage of the ship, Purple, and its prideful and indolent crew, who through pride and conceit loss the very thing they treasure.
The Cranes.
Talks about the travels Sienkiewicz went through and his dilemma of homesickness that lead him to compose a certain work entitled "Charcoal Sketches".
The Judgement of Peter and Paul on Olympus.
Is an allegory which presents St. Peter and St. Paul's judgement on Greek gods residing in Olympus. I personally enjoyed this one.

This is one of Sienkiewicz' minor works. He is well known for his historical epic With Fire and Sword.





This book forms part of my remarkably extensive reading list on Nobel Prize for Literature Laureates

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig

Title: Chess Story
Author: Stefan Zweig
Original Publication Date: 1941
Pages: 84

I never won a single chess match against my father. He was kind like that, subtly teaching a victory unearned is a success undeserved. No truer words could have been said nor as easily forgotten, for after all those years, whether by natural imprint of innumerable defeats that leaves a sad ennui on the human  soul or by my inherent lackadaisical treatment of this royal game of chess, with its defined sixty-four squares faithfully clinging to white and black, black and white, bored me, until now.

Enlivened by an immaculate narration, this powerful novella brought me to the deepest recesses of the mind, through a ruthless frightful void where terror pure and uncompromising breathe, where black and white means a lot more than a chequered board, a struggle of the human mind in timeless nothingness, to find one self, or, to lose it. Zweig too breathe life to chess, black and white, white and black, the infinite permutations contained in this fixed 64 squares with 32 pieces. To say that Zweig and this novella has challenge my own conceptions of the human psyche is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core!