Historic Tales compiled by Akshay Sonthalia

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This short story collection spans both time and place. From ancient Rome, in Dylan Gallagher’s “Amor Patriae,” to Super Bowl XXVII in 2003 California in Marcelino Raygoza’s “The Wonsie,” and from the Tonga people of Southern Africa in “The Unexpected Matriarch” by Palisa Muchimba, to Nazi Germany in my own “Dr. Muller’s Next Move,” HISTORIC TALES is an eclectic, sprawling anthology that creates a unique mosaic, and an important, much-needed reminder of the humanity that peoples this Earth, and which must be preserved.

In the opening piece, a meditation on the evolution of the notion of “story” by Dana Trick titled “A Tale of Storytellers and Historians,” Trick says that “some storytellers told their stories as lessons so that their listeners would become wiser and kinder…” All of these twenty-six authors aspire to this lofty goal, to one extent or another, each through their own, unique lens. In the post-911 world, as the cover illustration by Arpan Das suggests, we are in need of that wisdom and kindness more than ever.



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