If I had to choose a single remarkable book from all those I have ever read, I would rescue one from my childhood: The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde.
Before being able to read it on my own, I remember my mum telling us the wonderful story of this charming prince. Having turned a blind eye to the hardship and miseries of his people during his lifetime, he is now a golden statue on a tall column in the centre of a city, from where he sees nothing but ugliness and suffering. He feels such a great sorrow and sympathy for all that poverty that the sapphires that are his eyes weep. He cannot bear what surrounds him... A fairy tale of a prince without a princess, but with a swallow which plays her role, it reminds everybody of the importance of love, inner beauty, sacrifice and charity. What a moving and instructive story for a child! What a moving and instructive story for anyone!
Before being able to read it on my own, I remember my mum telling us the wonderful story of this charming prince. Having turned a blind eye to the hardship and miseries of his people during his lifetime, he is now a golden statue on a tall column in the centre of a city, from where he sees nothing but ugliness and suffering. He feels such a great sorrow and sympathy for all that poverty that the sapphires that are his eyes weep. He cannot bear what surrounds him... A fairy tale of a prince without a princess, but with a swallow which plays her role, it reminds everybody of the importance of love, inner beauty, sacrifice and charity. What a moving and instructive story for a child! What a moving and instructive story for anyone!
Wilde used to say that he had not written it "for children, but for childlike people from eighteen to eighty". Once more, he was making witty and satiric allusions to contemporary issues like the tremendous gap between the rich and the poor. He did not only aimed at ridiculing and scandalising that rigidly conventional Victorian society, but also at attacking its lack of humanitarian feelings. The dangerous game he was playing would come in with a high price...
I was also one of those children who grew up with Oscar Wilde´s tales, among others. Later, as an adult, I got acquainted with his extraordinary (beyond what is ordinary, highly exceptional)life.
ReplyDelete"I have nothing to declare but my genius", he said when he arrived at New York customs border control.
First flattered, then repudiated. For a long time a taboo name in England, today a gay icon.
Roger Frison-Roche, parisian journalist, that since 17 old year was linked a Chamonix and the mountains of Montblanc. His passion for the mountains led him to write this book, “ THE FIRST ROPE”
ReplyDeleteOn this book through an a simple history and with a wonderful descriptive, he tells us the physical and ethical problems of a mountaineer to be a mountain guide and with a light loving motif between him and a woman of the mountain world.
Willpower, the will of wanting to achieve something or assume responsibilities to oneself and to others, reach as much strength in this book that leaves you a memory for life.
Lisardo Zotes Alonso
Título: Balzac and the little Chinese seamstress
ReplyDeleteAutor: Sijie Dai
I would like to write about this book that I read few years ago. I loved very much because I think this book is an homage to the power of write words. The story is how across to read the authors such as Balzac, Dumas, Stendhal… some young people are going to discover that a book could be change a life and is a good way to face life and get a open mind.
About the author: Dai Sijie is a Chinese-French author. The government Maoist sent him to a reeducation camp during de Cultural Revolution in China.
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS
ReplyDeleteThe author of this great novel is Khaled Hosseini, he also wrote “The kite runner”, which is other great novel I also enjoyed.
This book tells the story of two women in Afghanistan, Mariam and Laila. Mariam is an illegitimate daughter of a rich businessman and grows in a humble home in the outskirts of Afghanistan. When she becomes fifteen years old, her father told her to marry Rashid, a shoemaker thirty years older than her. Twenty years later, Rashid rescues Laila from the streets; she is a homeless fifteen-years-old girl. Both women have a violent relationship but finally they get a deep relationship, as if they were a daughter and a mother. This change is the result of dramatic situations in her lives related to life in Afghanistan.
I really liked this novel, although it is very sad. What I liked the most was that the book tells a nice story and it also describes the situation in this country.
MADAME BOBARY BY GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
ReplyDeleteMme Bobary es the story of a woman who married a village doctor thinking she would have the life she had always dreamed- full of rich society's parties and romanticism- but then, she realized the reality was not as she had planned an she tries to get what she's missing.
The author, Gustave Flaubert. shows in the novel the real social life in a French towun in the middle of XIX century where women didn't have the same rights of men, and makes hypocrisy an banalyty clear at that time.
I would like to show my admiration for the tales of the Ancient Greece.
ReplyDeleteThere is a book "The most beautiful legends of the Antiquy Age” of Gustav Schaw, in which collects works of Homero, Virgilio and other Greco-Romans authors. You can read them in different order, beginning in several points of view of the story. The reading of it can become difficult in some way because of the huge number of characters and relationships. But all of them are beautiful tales of the heroic legends that all of us have in our memory.
Human feelings like love, beauty, hate, power, revenge, friendship(…) and social ranks are being showed so clearly that it is surprising to Know that they are as ancient as world.
The Iliada, The Odyseee etc…have to be read because of its beauty.
They are such lovely books that deserve to be reread.
Santos Calle Fernández.
I've just read "A thousand splendid suns" by Kaled Hosseini.I've read this novel translated into Spanish years ago, but now I did it in English.
ReplyDeleteThe author is an Afghan writer who is living nowdays in U.S.A.
The story places us in Afghanistan in the last 20th. century years.In that scenery,Hosseini gives us a portrait of daily life and the political evens that happened in that country.
But the most impressive in this book it's Miriam and Laila story.Through their lives, Hosseini tells us the women difficult situation in Afghanistan.
It's a very recommedable book to read,even though the story is quite hard. At the end, the author gives us a positive message:love triumph.