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The Stolen White Elephant
The Stolen White Elephant
Jan 13, 2026 11:09 AM

Author:Mark Twain

The Stolen White Elephant

'PALE TERROR GOES BEFORE HIM, DEATH AND DEVASTATION FOLLOW!'

From the father of American literature, four sparkling comic tales of extraordinary animals and parables subverted.

One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Reviews

Accomplished, moving and unnerving, Sweet Home is a tour de force.

—— Independent

Shades of Angela Carter colour Bray's title story while Fay Weldon and Jane Gardam are godmothers to Bray's fiction, bringing gifts of satire and observation that can prick and draw blood.

—— Guardian

[Bray] explores parenthood, loss, childhood and belonging with razor-sharp prose, a killer eye for stop-you-in-your-tracks detail and a real understanding of the hidden cruelties and unexpectedly sharp comforts of family life

—— Jenn Ashworth, author of The Friday Gospels

Suburbia in all its tarnished glory - Carys Bray teases at the cracks, and pulls at the loose threads dangling, in short stories that are funny sad and achingly true

—— Rob Shearman

The Famished Road is a masterpiece if one ever existed

—— Jay Parini , Boston Sunday Globe

A brilliant read, unlike anything you have ever read before...the message is universal

—— The Times

It is a rich, provocative and hopeful vision of the world, stuffed full of drama and surprise-its literary lineage - the ease with which spirits move through every day life - is from ancient Greece and medieval romances

—— Independent

Azaro says that his is "a spiritchild nation, one that keeps being reborn and after each birth comes blood and betrayal". There's a glory in that. Azaro's scary, awesome, hallucinated childhood is a piece of sustained invention that turns out to be glorious in its own right, too

—— Angela Carter , Sunday Times

The Magicians is fantastic, in all senses of the word. It's strange, fanciful, extravagant, eccentric, and truly remarkable.

—— Scott Smith , author of The Ruins

The Magicians is angst-ridden, bleak, occasionally joyous and gloriously readable. Forget Hogwarts: this is where the magic really is.

—— Jayne Nelson , SFX 5 star review

This is a book for grown-up fans of children's fantasy and would also appeal to those who loved Donna Tartt's The Secret History . Highly recommended

—— Library Journal

The Magicians is the most dazzling, erudite and thoughtful fantasy novel to date. You'll be bedazzled by the magic but also brought short by what it has to say about the world we live in

—— Gary Shteyngart , author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan

The Magicians is a spellbinding, fast-moving, dark fantasy book for grownups that feels like an instant classic. I read it in a niffin-blue blaze of page turning, enthralled by Grossman's verbal and imaginative wizardry, his complex characters and most of all, his superb, brilliant inquiry into the wondrous, dangerous world of magic

—— Kate Christensen , author of The Epicure's Lament and The Great Man

The Magicians is Harry Potter as it might have been written by John Crowley...This is one of the best fantasies I've read in ages

—— Elizabeth Hand , Fantasy & Science Fiction

The author has taken all that is held dear in the fantasy genre, reverently (most of the time) tipping the hat to Rowling, Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin and others, and shown it from a completely different and unique angle

—— Fantasy Book Review

...a gripping fantasy thriller that will please all the older Harry Potter fans out there

—— Yours Magazine

Sumell’s compulsively readable novel in stories introduces a restless underachiever as irresistible as he is detestable, surely one of the most morally, violently, socially complex personalities in recent literature…. Sumell’s debut is humbly macho, provoking outrage, pity, and finally tenderness. Perhaps this is a book readers will hate to love, but only because it feels, like Alby, all too real

—— Booklist

There's a special alchemy here that you are going to want to witness...offhand and funny, and then the tender heart emerges from the shadows, so tender, and comes at us with a knife. Every story here is two: one the fun, the other the blade

—— Ron Carlson

Focusing on the single reality that human beings die, Sumell wakes up, and boy oh boy is he ever pissed off... Sumell, on Alby's behalf, fights back, and he fights dirty. Using cunning, reckless rage, and bravura comic timing, he kicks death's ass... Bystanders get hurt, the reader got hurt, but at least I was reminded that I was part of this whole shitty deal. You'd like to believe that there are consolations, and there are. Being sentient, for example. Being able to read, for instance. Having read Making Nice

—— Geoffrey Wolff

The self-destructive narrator lashes out with reckless intimacy, random violence, and an often hilarious misplaced rage that shoots to wound rather than kill. What saves its victims and the reader is a naked rendering of a heart sorting through its broken pieces to survive. The result is an eloquent empathy, an uplift of hope-filled grace

—— Mark Richard

Making Nice will grab you by the throat, raise your blood pressure, and cause you to chortle in a crowd. It will also break your heart. When they're writing the history of the best characters of our time, Alby will be there, telling the others to get in line

—— Matthew Thomas , author of We Are Not Ourselves

Making Nice is a little bit special. A truly original portrayal of grief

—— Benjamin Judge , Book Munch

Making Nice has an anarchic humour and a goofy, ingenuous humanity that makes every page feel new… Some jokes…aren’t just funny, they are insightful, unexpected and hilarious. In its rampage to nowhere, Making Nice achieves the remarkable feat of making it feel better to travel hopelessly than to arrive.

—— Sandra Newman , Guardian
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