Fiction
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Fiction’
A duke with a passion for the art of enchantment is stranded by his enemies on a deserted island.
The play begins in Milan, where Prospero, the Duke, is buried among the parchments of his library, studying the magical arts. His brother Antonio, however, feels that what Milan needs is not a wizard but a decent Duke, and Antonio thinks he knows just who that should be.
Richard Hannay reflects on the innocent lives lost, when the lust for power or the desire for revenge makes us less than human.
It is Christmas 1915, and on a secret mission during the Great War, Richard Hannay has found refuge in a remote cottage in southern Germany. The house is kept by a desperately poor woman with three children, whose husband is away fighting the Russians. Hannay comes to realise that, unlike the German government, he does care about collateral damage.
Jim Hawkins, on a remote desert island, has escaped pirates only to be caught by a shadowy figure among the trees.
Young Jim Hawkins has sailed thousands of miles to a desert island to dig up a king’s ransom in hidden treasure, only to find on arrival that his ship’s crew were all pirates. He has just escaped from them — but now a strange figure emerges from the trees to confront him.
‘Be careful what you wish for’, they say, and there could be no more endearing example.
Four suburban children (two girls and two boys) have discovered a Phoenix wrapped up in a Persian carpet. The fire-bird, proud of its homeland, has encouraged them to send the magic carpet back to fetch Persia’s ‘most beautiful and delightful’ produce, and the bulging carpet has just returned.
A fox terrier spies what looks like a hapless victim – until he gets up close.
Jerome K. Jerome’s comic travelogue ‘Three Men in a Boat’ is subtitled ‘to say nothing of the dog’. In this extract, the dog Montmorency - a fox terrier - plays a starring role, but unfortunately not a particularly glorious one.
Allan Quartermain goes in search of a lost tourist and a legendary hoard of diamonds.
‘King Solomon’s Mines’ was published in 1885, and written in open admiration of Stevenson’s ‘Treasure Island’. It is recognised as spawning the ‘lost world’ genre of novels and movies, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger stories to ‘Indiana Jones’.