The Salvation of Pisco Gabar: And Other Stories

Geoffrey Household

mars 2015 · Open Road Media

À propos de cet ebook

Twelve evocative and unforgettable tales of adventure, self-discovery, and flawed humanity by one of the twentieth century’s most able storytellers

The literary career of the remarkable Geoffrey Household spanned more than half a century, from the 1930s to the late 1980s, and it began with the publication of his first short story, “The Salvation of Pisco Gabar,” in the Atlantic Monthly in 1936. A powerful, moving tale of a fateful bargain struck between a nonbelieving entrepreneur and a mad Indian priest at a treacherous impasse in the mountains of Peru, it begins a sterling collect of short fiction by a successor of Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson.

Here are a dozen masterful yarns and parables that span the world, transporting the reader from the quaint, picturesque hamlets of Europe to the remote villages of South America, from the bustle of New York City to the Mediterranean dockside. Whether he’s spinning the tale of a downtrodden Cockney and his affinity for a caged marsupial in the local zoo, revealing the bizarre truth about a werewolf prowling the dark Carpathian woods, or recalling the charming courtship of a tough yet virginal teenage street waif and a drunken Basque “pirate,” Geoffrey Household thrills, excites, and continually surprises with short fiction rich in color and consequence.

Quelques mots sur l'auteur

Geoffrey Household (1900–1988) was born in England. In 1922 he earned a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from the University of Oxford. After graduation, he worked at a bank in Romania before moving to Spain in 1926 and selling bananas as a marketing manager for the United Fruit Company.

In 1929 Household moved to the United States, where he wrote children’s encyclopedia content and children’s radio plays for CBS. From 1933 to 1939, he traveled internationally as a printer’s-ink sales rep. During World War II, he served as an intelligence officer for the British army, with posts in Romania, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, and Persia. After the war, he returned to England and wrote full time until his death. He married twice, the second time in 1942 to Ilona Zsoldos-Gutmán, with whom he had three children, a son and two daughters.

Household began writing in the 1920s and sold his first story to the Atlantic Monthly in 1936. His first novel, The Terror of Villadonga, was published during the same year. His first short story collection, The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories, appeared in 1938. Altogether, Household wrote twenty-eight novels, including four for young adults; seven short story collections; and a volume of autobiography, Against the Wind (1958). Most of his novels are thrillers, and he is best known for Rogue Male (1939), which was filmed as Man Hunt in 1941 and as a TV movie under the novel’s original title in 1976.