Hiram Haydn (1907–1973)

The best of modern literature . . . interesting. The title of this book is somewhat misleading. I for one fell into the trap of reading it as "a world of great short stories," but the fact is that much of the book is filled with excerpts from larger works. The editors attempted to find representative short fiction from every country of the world — except African countries. Seems odd to me that they couldn't even find something to excerpt from Egypt or South Africa, but what do I know about Egyptian or African literature between 1900 and 1947?

In reading these stories one is left with a sense of how bleak, primitive and hopeless humanity was in the first half of the 20th century. How different a world that was from what most of us living and reading today have experienced. Of course, the effects of the world wars between 1914 and 1945 created living horrors, personal and economic, that we can barely imagine today. A huge majority of the stories collected here reflect badly on humanity both collectively and individually. However, there are a few bright spots. Some of the stories actually leave the reader with at least an inner smile.

The editors state at the outset that most countries did not have a short story tradition, so it would have been impossible to create such an international collection of short fiction without resorting to excerpts from novels and even one play.

Altogether this is a significant collection of tales representing the period. I read the stories randomly, and as luck would have it, ended on a high note. I found some authors whose work interests me enough to look for more of their writing.… (more)