Ulf Wolf: 55 books

When the rules of love were written, one of them stated: “Once you put a face to the hunger of your heart, your heart cannot let go.” Unaware of this rule, for love had never confided in me, I recently put a face to my heart’s hunger, and this was an unwise thing to do; for with the fresh...

I arrived in this Universe a while back. Initially, you understand, just to sightsee. You know, glide around a little, take in the milky ways and the dusty swirls, all these stars large and small, all these planets green and brown and blue, some with purple plains and sandy deserts, some with...

She is angry sure with me. By now she knows sure I’m here. When she’s looked in all the other places she always knows I’m here and this is where she looks next. But I’m here anyway. Here is out of her wayest. Here is not under her feet, making her mad at me, always under her...

This happened when I was twelve. I was there and I saw it with my own eyes. I know what happened. There’s no talking or threatening me out of this. I have kept my silence since, all the way to this day. I have kept my silence all these years in order not to shame my parents, for I ask you:...

Long, long ago, deep in the Burmese jungle—on the long eastern shore of what was to be called Lake Indawgyi but which was then named for Ei-vu, the spirit of long, sweet water—there lived two tribes: The Mera, and the Lasi. Their lands, as large as any among the scattered jungle...

Once upon a time the crow was the most accomplished of all songbirds. And he knew it. And the world knew it. Every day, and long into the evening, even after the sun had set and as the stars began to twinkle, you could hear him match their glitter note for note. Families,...

He knows that life is precious. He knows this like he knows that water is wet and that stars are distant—he’s not sure how he knows, but he knows as he knows that life is not a given. But is also wonderful. Especially on nights like this. Is also hungry. Is also cold. Is also lonely. But...

Some would call them journal entries, but these Swedish musings are less so than stray thoughts now and then jotted down in the black notebooks I always carried with me at the time (and which I thought of as daybooks, hence the title). I was eighteen years old in the summer of 1967 when I began...

Then the old cobra rearranged himself on the stage, settling in for the telling. The three monkeys in white returned and sat down by his side. Beside us Mandar and Manini also sat down, easing into comfortable lotus. A restful silence now settled on the large hall. Then he began. “Hanuman’s...

A sailboat with a crew of three goes down in a fierce storm somewhere between South Georgia and Gough Islands in the Southern Seas. All three drown. Though one of them not entirely. ==== The ocean spread in all directions like a blue-green sheet of undulating glass; in long, slow...

I come from a family—that’s to say, a particular gene pool—where no conversation, whether in person or over the phone, rarely makes it beyond the third sentence without touching down and landing squarely upon the holy subject of food. As in: “What did you have for breakfast? Was it...

“You are not really here, are you?” “Well,” he said, pulling at his long beard with a gnarled little hand, small booted feet barely reaching the edge of the seat and showing dark leather soles scratched and patterned by years and miles, “that depends on who’s looking.” He...

I turn over for what must be the tenth time in as many minutes. The ground here is uneven and greets every attempt at comfort with a new root, or a small rock, or a pebble, or a hollow. I cannot fall asleep; I cannot find the position that might allow me to. Or perhaps I have slept, perhaps I have...

I ask too many questions. I’ve heard this all my life. So many questions, such peculiar ones, and where on earth do you get them from? Too many questions and too often. So often, in fact, that eventually they no longer heard them. In the end, they grew so tired of them, so deaf to them that...