To have a free access to classics is a privilege for a book reviewer. World’s most popular short stories by Srishti Publications is one such experiece. Collection of short stories by Maupassant, Anton Chekov, O Henry and Saki will feel you privileged to have acces to a bunch of literary diamonds.
Each writer has left a footprint in their short stories. More than a collection of short stories, it is a reasearch material which helps us in comparing the style of these four legendary writers.
The book is a cocktails of genres. We have comedy, thriller, romance, history and many more genres to study from the book.Maupassant’s stories are about twist in the climax, rather tragic at that like ‘Diamond Necklace, complex plots like Mme Teller and some of them are like folk tales like piece of string. Piece of string is the strory that I would select as my favorite because it is relevant forever, more so in the current scenario, wherein a simple incident is blown out of proportion to give more colors to it thereby accusing people withou knowing the reality. Anton Chekov’s stories are specilised for the characters. The stories are led by the characters and their idiosyncracies. The anthropoligical approach of the author makes his stories quite relatable.Complexities of human characters are exploited to the maximum extend possible.
O Henry’s stories are a mix of fantasy and reality. His stories are well known for the surprise endings but either since his style has been copied so much or due to the fact that they are relevant at the old times, his stories failed to keep up with the suspense. It could have been different had I read it in an era he wrote.
