Death Speaks...

This is W. Somerset Maugham's retelling of a very old Arabic story I found the other day, which he wrote in 1933, and I thought might be of some interest to at least some of you...

Death speaks: There was a merchant in Baghdad 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 marketplace 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...


PS: I will have some proper content soon, I promise. My long hiatus is coming to an end, and I'll be cranking things back up again. I was a bit disenchanted with the whole process, so there will be a few changes - but I'll be back :)

RIP: David Eddings

Wow. Blimey. Sad news today that David Eddings, aged 77, died yesterday evening.

The Belgariad series was one of my favourites when I first discovered fantasy, and I still remember creeping down the stairs into the dingy basement of a used bookshop in my town, and encountering the first book, Pawn of Prophecy, flicking through it, and just reading for hours. This was at a time when my father felt I was doing altogether too much reading and altogether not enough schoolwork, socialising or hard, physical graft down t' pit, and so had banned me from buying any more books.

I might as well have been banned from breathing. Pawn of Prophecy, in hindsight, was probably not that edgy or outré a book with which to break his ban, but it was jolly good fun. I think that pretty much characterises a lot of David's work. In recent years, his work hasn't had quite the reception it used to, but he still has many fans.

Goodbye, David Eddings. This mortal coil we must all off-shuffle, but few have touched so many lives with their writings as David did those who discovered fantasy in their 'teens.