Selected by The Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the Ten Best Fiction Books of 2003.The Noonday Cemetery &amp; Other Stories, selected by Herling himself shortly before his death in 2000, is a collection of thirteen brilliant stories spanning the last twenty years of his life. His novel The Island was published to great acclaim in 1993, and his memoir, A World Apart, is among the most powerful accounts of life in the Soviet gulag. Volcano and Miracle, published in 1996, contains short fiction and prose writings from his Journal Written at Night. But nowhere before have Herling's best stories―and Herling was indeed a master of the short story―been compiled and published in English translation. In "The Noonday Cemetery," an eerie graveyard on an Italian hillside overlooks the sea and hides the secrets of a murder (or suicide?). "Beata, Santa" describes the plight of a young Polish woman raped by Serbs, who is pressured by the Catholic Church to keep her child. In "A Madrigal of Mourning," a Russian woman musicologist becomes obsessed with Carlo Gesualdo (1560-1613), Prince of Venosa, a madrigalist and murderer. These timeless stories, dealing with moral, often historical, subjects and written in passionate, deeply affecting prose, affirm without a doubt the assessment by The Boston Globe that Herling is "a writer of stylistic mastery and moral depth, who deserves to be placed among the best in any language."

The Noonday Cemetery and Other Stories

Literature & Fiction

Gustaw Herling

Bill Johnston

Literary

New Directions

Reference

Christianity has long promoted itself as a religion based on historical events-the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. In this sweeping and highly readable book, Bill Johnston examines recent discoveries about the life and times of Jesus Christ and the great pagan religions which Christianity replaced. It turns out that almost nothing is actually known of Jesus, and that the Passion and Resurrection did not happen. What we call Christianity was invented well after Jesus' death by his followers, who were embroiled in unpleasant disputes between the brother of Jesus, known as James the Just, and the Apostle Paul. As the new religion expanded within the Roman Empire, it became more and more an amalgamation of pagan creeds, mimicking the worship of Dionysos, Osiris and others. A surprising and groundbreaking look at the origins of our religions and traditions.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Self-published

The Moral Dimensions of Teaching: Language, Power, and Culture in Classroom Interaction

Cary Buzzelli

Routledge

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Books by Bill Johnston