Назад к книге «Tooth and Claw – Short Stories» [Saki]

Tooth and Claw – Short Stories

Saki

Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 3

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by Rosemary Border.

Conradin is ten years old. He lives alone with his aunt. He has two big secrets. The first is that he hates his aunt. The second is that he keeps a small, wild animal in the garden shed. The animal has sharp, white teeth, and it loves fresh blood. Every night, Conradin prays to this animal and asks it to do one thing for him, just one thing.

This collection of short stories is clever, funny, and shows us �Nature, red in tooth and claw’. In other words, it is Saki at his very best.

Saki

Tooth and Claw – Short Stories

TOOTH AND CLAW

SHORT STORIES

In each of the following stories there is a wild or a dangerous animal. The animals can hurt and kill. And yet all the stories take place in houses, gardens, a small wood – safe, civilized places where we do not expect to meet wild and dangerous animals. So why are they there? Why has Saki brought these fierce creatures into our homes?

The answer is that we want them to be there. Of course, we do not want wolves in our gardens all the time; that would be very inconvenient. But sometimes – when we have an unwelcome visitor, or when we have to be polite when we want to be rude – sometimes a real wolf would be very useful indeed. Saki’s animals are sometimes funny, and they are sometimes cruel. But they always bite through what we pretend, and uncover the real emotions beneath.

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York

Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto

With offices in

Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

OXFORD and OXFORD ENGLISH are registered trade marks of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries

This simplified edition В© Oxford University Press 2008

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published in Oxford Bookworms 1991

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

No unauthorized photocopying

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the ELT Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above

You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer

Any websites referred to in this publication are in the public domain and their addresses are provided by Oxford University Press for information only. Oxford University Press disclaims any responsibility for the content

ISBN 978 0 19 479135 9

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Illustrated by: Jenny Brackley

Word count (main text): 8255 words

For more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library, visit www.oup.com/bookwormswww.oup.com/bookworms (http://www.oup.com/bookworms)

e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478657 7

e-Book first published 2012

Sredni Vashtar

Conradin was ten years old and was often ill.

�The boy is not strong,’ said the doctor. �He will not live much longer.’ But the doctor did not know about Conradin’s imagination. In Conradin’s lonely, loveless world, his imagination was the only thing that kept him alive.

Conradin’s parents were dead and he lived with his aunt. The aunt did not like Conr