Sensory Chronicles

The Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is rather sparsely read today, according to the author Pankaj Mishra, but we would do well to read him more often—for his warm-hearted, cosmopolitan worldview, as well as for his ability to tease out quiet vignettes of everyday life. We present three stories that exemplify these gifts: “The Kabuliwallah,” a bittersweet gem of a story about an itinerant Afghan merchant and a privileged Calcutta girl; “The Postmaster,” another narrative of intergenerational obligation and (mis)understanding; and “The Hungry Stones,” an old-fashioned otherworldly adventure, reminiscent of the One Thousand and One Nights of the Islamic Golden Age.

The Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) is rather sparsely read today, according to the author Pankaj Mishra, but we would do well to read him more often—for his warm-hearted, cosmopolitan worldview, as well as for his ability to tease out quiet vignettes of everyday life. We present three stories that exemplify these gifts: “The Kabuliwallah,” a bittersweet gem of a story about an itinerant Afghan merchant and a privileged Calcutta girl; “The Postmaster,” another narrative of intergenerational obligation and (mis)understanding; and “The Hungry Stones,” an old-fashioned otherworldly adventure, reminiscent of the One Thousand and One Nights of the Islamic Golden Age.

These three stories showcase the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield's ability to bring the subtle range of human experience into vivid focus, “full of vivid details and shimmering emotions,” as the novelist Margot Livesey puts it. “The Journey to Bruges” and “Being a Truthful Adventure” form a pair that allows us to follow along with a young Englishwoman’s wryly observed excursion to the Continent. “Something Childish but Very Natural” is a masterful exploration of a transitional moment in the journey from adolescence to adulthood: Mansfield (1888–1923) takes us through the comforts of naivety, the stirrings of love, and the encroachments of the so-called real world.

These three stories showcase the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield's ability to bring the subtle range of human experience into vivid focus, “full of vivid details and shimmering emotions,” as the novelist Margot Livesey puts it. “The Journey to Bruges” and “Being a Truthful Adventure” form a pair that allows us to follow along with a young Englishwoman’s wryly observed excursion to the Continent. “Something Childish but Very Natural” is a masterful exploration of a transitional moment in the journey from adolescence to adulthood: Mansfield (1888–1923) takes us through the comforts of naivety, the stirrings of love, and the encroachments of the so-called real world.

The restless Geneva-born Isabelle Eberhardt began writing about French North Africa in her teens, despite never having visited the region, and she soon moved to Algeria. She travelled in native garments and presented as a man, the intention and effect of which was to allow her to move freely on her own, and also joined a Sufi sect and married an Arab Algerian. She died young (in 1904, at the age of twenty-seven) in her adoptive homeland, leaving behind a cache of fiction, letters, and above all travel diaries, which readers have celebrated both for Eberhardt’s anti-colonialism and for the boldness of her adventuring spirit. The novelist Abdellah Taïa, who fell in love with Eberhardt’s writing as a teenager in Morocco, remembers that "[she] wrote in French but her words didn't sound French to me. These words brimmed with another worldview—Arab, Berber, Muslim—before which the writer showed not the least sign of arrogance."

The restless Geneva-born Isabelle Eberhardt began writing about French North Africa in her teens, despite never having visited the region, and she soon moved to Algeria. She travelled in native garments and presented as a man, the intention and effect of which was to allow her to move freely on her own, and also joined a Sufi sect and married an Arab Algerian. She died young (in 1904, at the age of twenty-seven) in her adoptive homeland, leaving behind a cache of fiction, letters, and above all travel diaries, which readers have celebrated both for Eberhardt’s anti-colonialism and for the boldness of her adventuring spirit. The novelist Abdellah Taïa, who fell in love with Eberhardt’s writing as a teenager in Morocco, remembers that "[she] wrote in French but her words didn't sound French to me. These words brimmed with another worldview—Arab, Berber, Muslim—before which the writer showed not the least sign of arrogance."

Kwaidan is the best known work by Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), who was born in Greece and raised in Ireland, the West Indies, and the U.S. South, before eventually moving to Japan, where he married and became a naturalized citizen. The book is a remarkable synthesis of fairy tales and ghost stories which Hearn painstakingly collected from sources as varied as antique manuscripts and conversations with elderly farmers. One highlight is “The Dream of Akinosuke,” which seems almost like a prismatic refraction of Hearn's own unlikely life story of finding home in a foreign land. The novelist Yoko Ogawa praises Hearn (known in Japan as Koizumi Yakumo) for his unique sensitivity to tales that transcend the rational. “Hearn's characters,” she writes, “cross over and submerge themselves in the chaos, and there they play for the spirits of the departed, make a life with the Snow Woman, become one with the cherry trees."

Kwaidan is the best known work by Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), who was born in Greece and raised in Ireland, the West Indies, and the U.S. South, before eventually moving to Japan, where he married and became a naturalized citizen. The book is a remarkable synthesis of fairy tales and ghost stories which Hearn painstakingly collected from sources as varied as antique manuscripts and conversations with elderly farmers. One highlight is “The Dream of Akinosuke,” which seems almost like a prismatic refraction of Hearn's own unlikely life story of finding home in a foreign land. The novelist Yoko Ogawa praises Hearn (known in Japan as Koizumi Yakumo) for his unique sensitivity to tales that transcend the rational. “Hearn's characters,” she writes, “cross over and submerge themselves in the chaos, and there they play for the spirits of the departed, make a life with the Snow Woman, become one with the cherry trees."

Kwaidan is the best known work by Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), who was born in Greece and raised in Ireland, the West Indies, and the U.S. South, before eventually moving to Japan, where he married and became a naturalized citizen. The book is a remarkable synthesis of fairy tales and ghost stories which Hearn painstakingly collected from sources as varied as antique manuscripts and conversations with elderly farmers. One highlight is “The Dream of Akinosuke,” which seems almost like a prismatic refraction of Hearn's own unlikely life story of finding home in a foreign land. The novelist Yoko Ogawa praises Hearn (known in Japan as Koizumi Yakumo) for his unique sensitivity to tales that transcend the rational. “Hearn's characters,” she writes, “cross over and submerge themselves in the chaos, and there they play for the spirits of the departed, make a life with the Snow Woman, become one with the cherry trees."

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis's "The Delirium," a standalone story within the novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, is a masterpiece of the multi-talented author. In the story, a flying hippo carries a man in the throes of his life's last fever dream to the beginning of history. Seemingly timeless, and even antique in its allegorical approach to our collective, never-ending, never-quite-satisfactory pursuit of happiness, "The Delirium" nevertheless has an irreverent, wry, utterly modern sensibility that is perhaps the author’s signature style. This selection of Machado (1839–1908) also includes “The Immortal” and “A Miraculous Excursion,” two more stories full of what the critic Benjamin Moser characterizes as Machado’s winking, ironical, playful wit.