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1500 questions
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Is Frou-Frou's death a foreshadowing of Anna's in Anna Karenina?
The only thing Vronsky loves more than Anna is Frou-Frou his horse.
In the race he rides her too hard, she falls, and her back breaks. He kicks her in a rage trying to get her up and then shoots her when he realises she can't.
At the same time Anna…
Mirte
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Science fiction book in which a doctor treats a sociopathic child who killed her brother
This is going to sound like an extremely weird and specific identification request, but the book popped into my head a few days ago and it's become an itch in my brain to remember which book it was. I remember enough about it that it will hopefully…
Sciborg
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What details does the "Without Weapons" / "A Man from a Distant Star" stage play add to the lore of "Hard to be a God"?
It appears that Strugatsky brothers have written a stage adaptation of Hard to be a God, named Without Weapons or A Man from a Distant Star. Wikipedia claims that the play "reveals previously unknown details" about the world of Hard to be a God.…
Gallifreyan
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Looking for a collection of British medical short stories circa 1950's
Circa 1977 I read a collection of short stories, all with a medical theme and all told from a British doctor’s point of view (this was in a British library). I have often remembered it, but have never been able to think of the author or the…
Barnaby
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Was the sealed letter ordering Hamlet's death a Biblical reference?
Is the sealed letter that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern carry that orders Hamlet's execution a deliberate reference to the Biblical King David having Uriah the Hittite carry a letter to Joab ordering his death?
In the morning it happened that David…
EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine
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What does the sukebind represent?
Stella Gibbons invented the sukebind for Cold Comfort Farm, and she wields it with metaphorical deftness as if it had its own long floriographic history to draw on.
I'd assumed that the sukebind and its blooming were indicative of animal urges,…
BESW
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What does its future setting add to Cold Comfort Farm?
Cold Comfort Farm is set gently but irresistibly a decade or two after its original publishing date, with video phones and the Anglo-Nicaraguan War of '46 and so forth.
However, setting the action in the future doesn't impact the plot or characters…
BESW
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What is the relevance of the essays in Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'?
War and Peace is regularly interspersed with essays -- something that I have not seen anywhere else in literature. How significant are these essays? They obviously help in exploring the themes and messages of the novel, but how do they fit in the…
user1089
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Was Catcher in the Rye autobiographical?
Was Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger in any way based on Salinger's earlier life, like the works of Charles Dickens?
CHEESE
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Which short story describes how a man's teaching logic to his would-be girlfriend backfires?
I read a short story in the early 90s, from a collection dating from the 80s or earlier, which detailed a young man teaching logical fallacies to his female friend. Later, when he begins to court her, he finds himself rebuffed as she uses the…
Donnadogsoth
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Which Upanishad is TS Eliot referencing with "Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata." and why?
Specifically the last lines of the Wasteland:
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
[The Wasteland]
The poem was written in 1922, and the invocation can be taken as a response to the horrors of the first World War, but I'm…
DukeZhou
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Meaning of 'white mask on my otherwise tan face'
I nearly always saw them at the beach, where it’s difficult to get a good look at anyone. Particularly so in my case, because I’m nearsighted and would rather see everything through a haze than return to Madrid with a kind of white mask on my…
Sasi
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Why does Aphrodite speak like this while disguised as the old woman?
In Book III of The Iliad, there's an incident where the goddess Aphrodite disguises herself to speak to Helen. The translator wrote her speech like this:
Now she took the shape of an old woman who used to comb wool for Helen in her old home before…
Mithical
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Drama, probably set in a hospital, where we know early on (from the blurb?) that someone is going to die due to a doctor's mistake
I read this in the 90s, but I remember that, when I mentioned it to my mother, she commented that it was a fairly well-known book which she herself had read when she was younger (she would have been in her late 30s when she made that comment, so she…
Sean Duggan
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How long is the Nijni-Novgorod trade fair?
In Jules Verne, Michel Strogoff, part 1 chapter 5, when Michel arrives to Nijni-Novgorod, there's a huge trade fair going on in the city. The text seems to give two contradictory numbers about how long the trade fair is.
Nijni-Novgorod, qui en…
b_jonas
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