Holy Man And Other Stories

Above a disused bar, in a dilapidated Parisian hotel that houses an assortment of indigent, marginalized lost souls, one of the inhabitants, a mysterious, reclusive holy man, is the subject of much speculation from some of his fellow occupants and respectful reverence from others. As the tale unfolds, the dynamics of this precarious microcosm are laid bare, in a powerful portrayal of those society has forgotten.Written when the author of Cain's Book was at the height of his creative powers and enjoying an increasing reputation in avant-garde literary circles, 'The Holy Man' is here presented with 'A Being of Distances', 'Peter Pierce' and 'A Meeting', stories which similarly tackle themes of loneliness and disenfranchisement.

Above a disused bar, in a dilapidated Parisian hotel that houses an assortment of indigent, marginalized lost souls, one of the inhabitants, a mysterious, reclusive holy man, is the subject of much speculation from some of his fellow occupants and respectful reverence from others. As the tale unfolds, the dynamics of this precarious microcosm are laid bare, in a powerful portrayal of those society has forgotten. Written when the author of Cain's Book was at the height of his creative powers and enjoying an increasing reputation in avant-garde literary circles, 'The Holy Man' is here presented with 'A Being of Distances', 'Peter Pierce' and 'A Meeting', stories which similarly tackle themes of loneliness and disenfranchisement.

In a hermitage at the top of a mountain lives the holy man. Every summer a long line of pilgrims queues at the hermitage entrance and each pilgrim is hoping for words of wisdom from the holy man that will heal their lives. There is the impatient woman who learns peace, the jealous man who learns trust, the famous man who learns humility and the guilty mercenary who finds a mission. In each of the many characters we can see mirrored something of ourselves. Some learn their lessons from other pilgrims, some from the holy man himself; others find answers from the experience of being on the mountain. These stories unravel the knots of everyday anxieties with profound ease, humor, wisdom, and elegance. Perhaps the most winning feature of this book is that we are all in here, somewhere, with our wounded egos, insecurities, bad tempers, impatience and ambitiousness. The Holy man shows us the good we already have in us but cannot see.

Buddhism and insomnia led novelist Susan Trott to invent an alternative to counting sheep: she counted a line of people waiting to see a holy man. Each chapter of this warm and witty parable tells the tale of a pilgrim seeking answers--and finding them in marvelous and unexpected places.

In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, The Cossacks describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilization after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy's own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, is a compelling consideration of the nature of war, while Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, returns to the Caucasus of Tolstoy's youth to explore the life of a great leader torn apart by a conflict of loyalties. Written at the end of the nineteenth century, it is amongst the last and greatest of Tolstoy's shorter works.

Averil Cameron is one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. This collection (Cameron’s third in the Variorum series) discusses the changing approach among historians of the later Roman empire from the 1960s to the present and the articles reproduced have been chosen to reflect both these wider changes in treatments of the subject as well as Cameron’s own development as a historian over many decades. It provides a revealing and important survey of some profound historiographical changes. Her volume contains fundamental papers and reviews that tell a story in which she has played a leading part. They move from her early days as an ancient historian to her important contribution in the establishment of the field of late antiquity and point to her later work as a Byzantinist, a trajectory rivalled by few other scholars. The book will be important for scholars and students of the later Roman empire and late antiquity, and for anyone interested in the inheritance of Edward Gibbon, the perennial questions about the end of the Roman empire and its supposed decline, or the emergence of Islam in the early seventh century and its relation to the late antique world. (CS 1113).

Miguk, the Holy Man, retires on the small Pacific island of Nevahachi. People are amused when he rails against (unwanted) Western encroachments and the (haphazard) industrialization of the island. Yet when he trades his life for a hostage (the woman he loves), during an aborted robbery, and then induces his captor to give himself up, the island begins to believe he is somehow graced. He later saves the people from a curse that has hung over the island for many years. He appears even to cure a woman of her illness. His untimely death is turned into a miracle. His hand appears to rise in benediction, as if blessing the island - and an industrial project that he once opposed.