Saturday, September 1, 2007

Death Speaks

Jeffrey Archer has been my favourite writer from the time i turned 15. Thats when i first read his short stories, thanks to a very dear aunt who has always been a role model to me. She always had the habit of buying us books and i truly loved her for that.. i believe books are the best gift and i too practise gifting them now :) Also im really happy that we are visiting her in a few days time. :)

She gifted me his ""Collected short stories" which contained all 36 short stories of his till that date.. The book had to be a favourite firstly because she had gifted it to me.. secondly it was remarkable, the twist and turns he brought in his short stories.. i was so spellbound. From there began the saga of reading Jeffery Archer and i still like reading him over and over again..
Here is one of his shortest stories for you i came across from my current read "To cut along story short" titled "Death Speaks"

"There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra. "

23 comments:

KAYLEE said...

OH I LOVE THAT STORY MAY HAVE TO TRY AND READ MORE!

Unknown said...

Hahahahaha... that's quite a summary you put in there DD. I didn't know Mr. Archer had a humorous side to him too... erm well, maybe I haven't read much of his books.

tulipspeaks said...

death speaks just like tulip speaks? :P



ammu.

Lakshmi Bharadwaj said...

Great, so you are a Jeffry Archer fan! What kinds of books do you generally read? How about fantasy? I am a total book-lover too, I go crazy over novels, (now that's unusal for a sixteen year old) and you have an aunt who gives you books, for me, it's a grandpa who is a book-lover.

AmitL said...

Oh,wow..how is I never heard of this 'collected short stories' from JA?It'd be right up my alley,rather than trying to read 500+ page tomes.

Keshi said...

wow! :)

Keshi.

Maddy said...

yes, this was a good collection by archer. in fact he has one more collection of shorts which is brilliant - Twist in the tale. this chap has his blog too, but is rather morose in there..

http://jeffreyarchers.blogspot.com/

Follet that way is better!!

Little Miss Muffet said...

ah! that was a nice twist! :)

Nanditha Prabhu said...

yes that is a good collection of his stories!

Keshi said...

hows u sweetz?

Keshi.

Radha said...

Great find, Diya. The irony in the story is amazing!

MeMyself_n_I said...

aaah yes that is one of my favorite jeffrey archer stories.

Unknown said...

Books are the best gift for me too...:-) loved that story!

Keshi said...

where r ya?

Keshi.

Aswin said...

one of my fav authors....i have read most of his books...but didnt know that he had a collected short stories book... "death speaks"..let me check that one out....

KAYLEE said...

WHERE YA BEEN?

Keshi said...

TC Diya...

Keshi.

diyadear said...

thank u all for coommenting.. glad u all liked it

Anonymous said...

diya I am better wil stay:P

Anonymous said...

awesome !!!
will definitely try to get this one :)

Super said...

love jeffrey archer from the start and yes "death speaks" is also one of favs....infact almost ALL his stories are amazing..and its sad that we cant hope for new stuff from him now.

Wayne Bevan said...

Death speaks isn't written by Jeffrey Archer. It's an ancient story translated from Arabic. He states in the Preface of 'To cut a long story short'...

"In my travels around the globe, always searching for some vignette which might have a life of its own, I came across 'Death Speaks', and was so moved by it that I have placed the story at the beginning of the book."

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