{"title":"Wendell Mayo","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"twice-born-world-stories-of-lithuania-book-wendell-mayo-9798986505206","title":"Twice-Born World: Stories of Lithuania","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA New Collection from Wendell Mayo, author of 'In Lithuanian Wood', and The Cucumber King of K dainia?'\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWendell Mayo captures the fractured, mournful soul of modern Lithuania like no other writer. In his new book, TWICE-BORN WORLD: STORIES OF LITHUANIA, he resurrects themes from \u003cem\u003eIn Lithuanian Wood\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Cucumber King of K dainiai\u003c\/em\u003e: grief, loneliness, the impossibility of communication, the inexplicability of desire. In this volume, the themes are even more sharply delineated, with desire playing a more prominent role. Mayo's characters, like Lithuania herself, long to connect to a more youthful, hopeful version of the past. As always, Mayo masterfully combines elements of the absurd with deeply poetic language. Every story in TWICE-BORN WORLD is a gem. I couldn't put this book down.--Daiva Markelis, author of \u003cem\u003eWhite Field, Black Sheep: A Lithuanian-American Life\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn TWICE-BORN WORLD, Wendell Mayo manages the seemingly impossible--to make his stories both steeped in post-Soviet Lithuanian sensibilities while also making them feel universal. These are characters in the midst of transition, characters who frequently tell stories that mesmerize, as if stories might make sense of this beguiling new world. The effect is startling as Mayo seamlessly slides through space and time and perspective, offering subtle commentary on the geopolitics of the 1980s, all of which feels particularly acute in 2018. A necessary companion to Mayo's \u003cem\u003eIn Lithuanian Wood\u003c\/em\u003e, and a stunning collection by a master of the short story.--Brad Felver, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Dogs of Detroit\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTWICE-BORN WORLD transports readers to a Baltic sphere of post-Soviet nostalgia and struggle, of boozy, clumsy, and erotic East-West encounters, of overheard park-bench conversations, and of knee-capped Lenin statues. In this clear-eyed yet hope-filled collection, Wendell Mayo welcomes us to his Lithuania: a topsy-turvy place of rainfall, blue skies, everyday poetry, sinking despair, and limitless possibility.--Julija Sukys, author of \u003cem\u003eSiberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter's Reckoning\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWendell Mayo's heart-wrenching new collection about contemporary Lithuania proves yet again that he is one of the living masters of the short story form. Mayo employs a dazzling array of voices, creates a host of unforgettable characters, both Lithuanian and American, and keeps at his ready a sympathetic and encyclopedic knowledge of Lithuanian history; in the process, he weaves tenacious tales about men and women snared by political circumstances, but even more so by the unruly instincts of their own hearts. Yet finally, miraculously, in the end, every story in the book manages to be about the act of storytelling itself: its magic, its elusiveness, and its biological power. Mayo has never written so convincingly and so well.--John Vanderslice, author of \u003cem\u003eIsland Fog\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFiction.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50295862001937,"sku":"GOR013915975","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50296312103185,"sku":"GOR013916748","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/B0BH55FYQV.jpg?v=1750777063"},{"product_id":"what-is-said-about-elephants-book-wendell-mayo-9781950730551","title":"What Is Said About Elephants","description":"\u003cp\u003e Mayo begins his new collection with a brief tale and utterance made by an elephant trainer at a zoo: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \"It's said,\" Beasley says, \"an elephant won't pass by a dead elephant without casting a branch or some dust on the body. A kind of homage, I suppose.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e In a variety of ways, the twelve stories that follow are tributes to characters who find themselves on the fringes, at the sides of roads. In \"When the Moon Was Ours for the Taking,\" a man recalls a brief few days he found himself fishing with his NASA-physicist father who is otherwise preoccupied with the Space Race craze of the 1960s. In \"A Mindfulness Becoming Less,\" an aging, out-of work Homer Lynch convinces himself he doesn't need the job and health care he needs. In \"Vigil for Ammospiza nigréscens,\" a veteran of the Vietnam War searches for an extinct bird in the salt marshes of Florida, haunted by the North Vietnamese soldier he killed. In \"Burn Barrel,\" Cole, a jobless college graduate, despairing that he can never pay his student loans, begins to burn all his university papers, in a strange effort to erase the debt. In these and other stories, Mayo's characters are people we think we know, in situations we think we understand-and then realize in flashes of truth we can see them-and ourselves-in new ways.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52684490014993,"sku":"NLS9781950730551","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781950730551.jpg?v=1762323147"},{"product_id":"survival-house-book-wendell-mayo-9781622881895","title":"Survival House","description":"A humorous collection of short stories, Survival House explores communism in the 1960s, popular literature such as The Scarlet Letter and As You Like It. “Cherry Pie” revolves around the narrator’s intense paranoia that he is seen as a pedophile after offering to buy two boys a slice of pie. The title story showcases a married couple in the pursuit of buying a ranch that survived the Survival Town test explosion in 1955, where also the husband and wife struggle to start a family, in which lovemaking scenes are played out simplistically and comically.  With refreshingly realistic dialogue, ordinary scenes presented in an extraordinary fashion, Wendell Mayo caps off the collection with “The World is Ending Yesterday,” where an American visits a Soviet Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile site in the Plokštine Forest after the Cold War.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52752893968657,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52752894492945,"sku":"NIN9781622881895","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781622881895.jpg?v=1763563054"},{"product_id":"in-lithuanian-wood-book-wendell-mayo-9781935210757","title":"In Lithuanian Wood","description":"A riveting novel reflecting current times in Eastern Europe--a time of opening up and of storytelling so vital to understanding cultural differences.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52820625785105,"sku":"NLS9781935210757","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781935210757.jpg?v=1764330319"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-wendell-mayo.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}