The seventeen stories collected here will take the reader around the globe, from Asia to Europe to North America. The common thread that binds them is the characters, most of whom have roots in the Indian subcontinent. They undergo a variety of experiences to reveal the limits of power as well as the endurance of love, the agony of loss as well as the blessings of compassion. A college student sacrificing her life to spare her fellow women the indignities she has suffered during the liberation war of Bangladesh, a teenager discovering from a kindly doctor that he is not after all deranged, and a venerable teacher making a life-changing decision with his student’s help are among the characters that illuminate this collection. In its pages, nations perish and nations are born amid wars and adversities, violence and chaos, tossing people around like rags in a storm; but what sustains them even in the worst of times is the love and compassion between individuals, in which life finds dignity and the ultimate meaning.
About the Author
Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and educated in Germany and the United States, Ronny Noor is now an English professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, U.S.A. He previously taught at Salisbury State University and the University of Texas at Brownsville. An award-winning teacher, his poems, stories, essays, and reviews have been published around the world, in journals and newspapers such as The Toronto Review, Palo Alto Review, South Asian Review, Short Story, World Literature Today, Commonwealth Novel in English, World Haiku Review, Taj Mahal Review, South Central Review, The Weekend Independent, High Coupe: A Journal of Contemporary Haiku, the Aurorean, paper wasp, FreeXpresSion, South by Southeast, The Daily Star, Kokako, and Contemporary Literary Review India. He is also the author of Snake Dance in Berlin (a novel), Slice of Heaven and Other Essays (a collection), and Where Heaven Spreads Wide and Other Stories (a collection).
An avid traveler, Noor traveled widely in Europe and the United States, riding the Balt-Orient Express – on which the title story of this collection is set – from Berlin, Germany to Bucharest, Romania; and the Greyhound from New York to California. He lives in Brownsville, Texas.
Title: Where Heaven Spreads Wide & Other Stories
Author: Dr Ronny Noor
Publisher/Imprint: Leaf Press
ISBN: 978-81-935543-5-7
Paperback: 272 pages
Price: Rs 299/
Genre: Short Stories/Fiction
Language: English
Publication Year: 2019
Available: Amazon
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