"The Kiss" by Angela Carter

Take a trip to the center of Asia, to ancient Samarkand, where the Uzbeks dress in brilliant silks and bright lilies and tulips grow among the mountain rocks. Or at least they do in Angela Carter's imagination, in this wee story about the conqueror Tamburlaine (Tamerlane) and his beautiful and clever wife. There may or may not be a kiss involved. Read by Scoot.

Fairy tales, tall tales, ghost stories, myths, and legends were the domain of the Englishwoman Angela Carter's many short stories and novels. It might be reductivist to call her worldview "feminist," though that's part of it--she was a true humanist as well, in love with the imaginary creations of people across the globe. We here at "Stories to Go" are still waiting to see The Company of Wolves, the movie based on one of Carter's reappraisals of the Brothers Grimm, though we actually did meet her, sort of, in a real building in a real town a long time ago. She had amazing long silver hair.