Reviews for Tale Told by Moonlight

The average rating for Tale Told by Moonlight based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-12-28 00:00:00 Robert Parks Short stories and pieces from his 4-volume autobiography, telling of his time as a civil servant in the Far East (as it was then known). If that makes the book sound dated and uninviting, read it and change your mind.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-11 00:00:00 Frank Abrignani Of course you're reading this because you already love Virginia. It's probably a solid morsel of average travel writing, but it's hard to appreciate it in its own right because there's little here for fans of Virginia. Reads like Steinbeck, extremely plain and plotty yarns, direct language and dialogue-oriented. However... what is interesting is his unique setting in time and location: British Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Lots of dated attitudes, pretty normal yellow fever, orientalism, the whole shebang in these short stories. To be clear I never "dock" for that stuff in historical fiction if it's suitable for the context'it's fascinating to experience those attitudes and the sociopolitical environment of British colonization. Best is "The Two Brahmans", a straightforward parable about the caste system, it reminds me of Steinbeck's The Pearl. The colonial setting reminded me of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which is set not in a colony but a Dutch trading post in Japan, which is a far richer exploration of the west-meets-east dynamic.