The Village Teacher and Other Stories
Publisher: Glagoslav Publications
Published: 2022
Place of publication: London, UK
Format: paperback
Number of pages: 300
ISBN-13: 9781914337758
Copyright date: 2022
First sentence: A shack built from narrow, unpeeled logs, a storage building from old wooden planks, to the left, a cowshed, and beyond the cowshed, vast fields of mud.
Description: The twenty-two stories in this collection, set mostly in Eastern Europe during World War Two, depict a 
world fraught with conflict and chaos. Theodore Odrach is witness to the horrors that surround him, 
and as both an investigative journalist and a skilful storyteller, using humor and irony, he guides us 
through his remarkable narratives. His writing style is clean and spare, yet at the same time compelling 
and complex. There is no short supply of triumph and catastrophe, courage and cowardice, good and 
evil, as they impact the lives of ordinary people.

In “Benny’s Story”, a group of prisoners fight to survive despite horrific circumstances; in “Lickspittles”, 
the absurdity of an émigré writer’s life is highlighted; in “Blood”, a young man travels to a distant city 
in search of his lost love; in “Whistle Stop”, two German soldiers fight boredom in an out-of-the-way 
outpost, only to see their world crumble and fall