Jules Verne is probably the world's first science-fiction novelist. His Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) centers around a sea monster that keeps on menacing and damaging ships and ocean liners in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. When the US government eventually decides to destroy the monster, a group of whaling and marine biology experts from different nationalities led by Professor Arronax are invited to join the American ship Abraham Lincoln and engage in an expedition around the South American continent to search for the weird creature. After losing their first battle, the crew discover, to their surprise, that the supposed monster is rather a large metal body that travels under the water. They are soon abducted and brought inside the vessel to meet its eccentric commander Captain Nemo. The submarine's new passengers learn that Captain Nemo has built the vessel to isolate himself from world governments and to spend his lifetime exploring new worlds and conducting scientific research. Captain Nemo's treatment of his visitors is generally respectful and kind except for his radical rejection of their pleas to leave the submarine and go back home. By the end of the story, the submarine is attacked by another ship sent by Captain Nemo's enemies. Captain Nemo decides to destroy the attacking ship and to send it to the bowels of the ocean. The novel ends when the submarine encounters a very strong whirlpool named "e;Maelstrom,"e; allowing Professor Arronax to flee with the rest of his crew while the fate of Captain Nemo and his creation remains unknown.

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888 in a hotel bedroom in what is now Times Square, New York. Much of his childhood was spent in the comfort of books at boarding schools whilst his actor father was on the road and his Mother contended with her own demons. He spent only a year at University - Princeton - and various reasons have been given for his departure. However whatever his background and education denied or added to his development it is agreed amongst all that he was a playwright of the first rank and possibly America's greatest. His introduction of realism into American drama was instrumental in its development and paved a path for many talents thereafter. Of course his winning of both the Pulitzer Prize (4 times) and the Nobel Prize are indicative of his status. His more famous and later works do side with the disillusionment and personal tragedy of those on the fringes of society but continue to build upon ideas and structures he incorporated in his early one act plays. Eugene O'Neill suffered from various health problems, mainly depression and alcoholism. In the last decade he also faced a Parkinson's like tremor in his hands which made writing increasingly difficult. But out of such difficulties came plays of the calibre of The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Eugene O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he whispered his last words: "e;I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room."e;

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago, Illinois. His early career was unremarkable. After failing to enter West Point he enlisted in the 7th Calvary but was discharged after heart problems were diagnosed. A series of short term jobs gave no indication as to a career path but finally, in 1911, married and with two young children, he turned his hand to writing. He aimed his works squarely at the very popular pulp serial magazines. His first effort 'Under The Moons Of Mars' ran in Munsey's Magazine in 1912 under the pseudonym Norman Bean. With its success he began writing full time. A continuing theme of his work was to develop series so that each character had ample opportunities to return in sequels. John Carter was in the Mars series and there was another on Venus and one on Pellucidar among others. But perhaps the best known is Tarzan. Indeed Burroughs wanted so much to capitalise upon the brand that he introduced a syndicated Tarzan comic strip, movies and merchandise. He purchased a large ranch north of Los Angeles, California, which he named "e;Tarzana."e; The surrounding communities outside the ranch voted in 1927 to adopt the name as their own. By 1932 Burroughs set up his own company to print his own books. Here we publish 'The Outlaw Of Torn' somewhat different to what the title might suggest in the hands of an ordinary writer but in the hands of Edgar Rice Burroughs the title is just the beginning.....

Booth Tarkington was born on July 29, 1869 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize more than once. When you look through the quality of his work it is easy to understand why. The Magnificent Ambersons, Alice Adams, Penrod, Penrod And Sam - all classics. The Penrod novels depict a typical upper-middle class American boy of 1910 vintage, revealing a fine, bookish sense of American humor. At one time, his Penrod series was as well known andregarded as Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Much of Tarkington's work consists of satirical and closely observed studies of the American class system and its foibles. Coming as he did from a patrician Midwestern family that lost much of its wealth after the Panic of 1873 the foundations for that outlook are clear. Today, he is best known for his novel The Magnificent Ambersons which contrasted the decline of the "e;old money"e; Amberson dynasty with the rise of "e;new money"e; industrial tycoons in the years between the American Civil War and World War I. In this volume you have an opportunity to read one his plays, The Man From Home.

Thomas Kyd was born in 1558 and is most noted as a pivotal figure in the development of Elizabethan drama. In his own time he was highly praised but fell into obscurity until re-discovery in the late 1700's. his most famous work is The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again, a tragedy written between 1582 and 1592 and established the then new genre of the revenge play. With the use of several violent murders and a structure of a play-within-a-play and a ghost intent on vengeance Kyd took drama in new directions that remain with us today. Thomas Kyd died in August 1594.

Francis Beaumont was born in 1584 near the small Leicestershire village of Thringstone. Unfortunately precise records of much of his short life do not exist.The first date we can give for his education is at age 13 when he begins at Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College, Oxford). Sadly, his father died the following year, 1598. Beaumont left university without a degree and entered the Inner Temple in London in 1600. A career choice of Law taken previously by his father.The information to hand is confident that Beaumont's career in law was short-lived. He was quickly attracted to the theatre and soon became first an admirer and then a student of poet and playwright Ben Jonson. Jonson at this time was a cultural behemoth; very talented and a life full of volatility that included frequent brushes with the authorities.Beaumont's first work was Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, it debuted in 1602.By 1605, Beaumont had written commendatory verses to Volpone one of Ben Jonson's masterpieces.His solo playwriting career was limited. Apart from his poetry there were only two; The Knight of the Burning Pestle was first performed by the Children of the Blackfriars company in 1607. The audience however was distinctly unimpressed.The Masque of the Gentlemen of Grays-Inne and the Inner-Temple was written for part of the wedding festivities for the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James I and Frederick V, Elector Palatine. It was performed on 20 February 1613 in the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace.By that point his collaboration with John Fletcher, which was to cover approximately 15 plays together with further works later revised by Philip Massinger, was about to end after his stroke and death later that year.That collaboration is seen as one of the most significant and fruitful of the English theatre.

The village of Colonus, near Athens, was, in the year 495 BC, the birthplace of Sophocles. Sophocles place in Greek Tragedy is assured. His birth places him between the two other giants of Greek tragedy; schylus and Euripides. He was 30 years younger than schylus, the reigning master of drama and was fifteen years older than Euripides, who would, in turn, usurp Sophocles. Sophocles was a handsome and agile youth and selected, at the age of sixteen, to lead with dance and lyre the chorus which celebrated the triumph of Athens and its Allies over Persia at the battle at Salamis. Sophocles career as a dramatist was marked by a victory in competition with schylus, under exceptional circumstances. At the time the remains of the hero Theseus were being removed by Cimon from the isle of Scyros to Athens and, at the same time, a contest involving the two dramatists was being held. schylus was lauded at the time as the supreme dramatist but Sophocles was popular if inexperienced. The first prize was awarded to Sophocles, greatly to the disgust of the veteran schylus, who taking umbrage, soon afterward departed for Sicily. By all accounts Sophocles would now write and exhibit tragedies and satyric dramas for the next sixty years. The canon of his work varies to between 120 and 180 plays, naturally a number were fillers and not of his highest standard but the prodigious output is extraordinary. In the annual Dionysia, the number of first prizes he won is put at between eighteen and twenty-four, with many more second prizes. On this basis alone schylus and Euripides were left a long way behind. So far from being dulled with age and toil, his powers seem only to have assumed a mellower tone, a more touching pathos, a sweeter and gentler mode of thought and expression. Sophocles was spared the misery of witnessing the final overthrow of his country, dying, at the age or around 90 after a long life full of triumphs and honours, a few months before the defeat of Aegospotami brought the downfall of his beloved Athens. This naval Battle of Aegospotami took place in 405 BC and decisively determined the outcome of the Peloponnesian War. In the battle, a Spartan fleet under Lysander destroyed the Athenian navy. This effectively ended the war, since Athens could not import grain or communicate with its empire without control of the sea. There are only seven dramas of Sophocles that have survived. It can be argued that Sophocles and his works were the high-water mark of Athenian excellence. He is rightly lauded and we can only wonder at the splendours he wrote that are now lost to us.

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888 in a hotel bedroom in what is now Times Square, New York. Much of his childhood was spent in the comfort of books at boarding schools whilst his actor father was on the road and his Mother contended with her own demons. He spent only a year at University - Princeton - and various reasons have been given for his departure. However whatever his background and education denied or added to his development it is agreed amongst all that he was a playwright of the first rank and possibly America's greatest. His introduction of realism into American drama was instrumental in its development and paved a path for many talents thereafter. Of course his winning of both the Pulitzer Prize (4 times) and the Nobel Prize are indicative of his status. His more famous and later works do side with the disillusionment and personal tragedy of those on the fringes of society but continue to build upon ideas and structures he incorporated in his early one act plays. Eugene O'Neill suffered from various health problems, mainly depression and alcoholism. In the last decade he also faced a Parkinson's like tremor in his hands which made writing increasingly difficult. But out of such difficulties came plays of the calibre of The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Eugene O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he whispered his last words: "e;I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room."e;

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago, Illinois. His early career was unremarkable. After failing to enter West Point he enlisted in the 7th Calvary but was discharged after heart problems were diagnosed. A series of short term jobs gave no indication as to a career path but finally, in 1911, married and with two young children, he turned his hand to writing. He aimed his works squarely at the very popular pulp serial magazines. His first effort 'Under The Moons Of Mars' ran in Munsey's Magazine in 1912 under the pseudonym Norman Bean. With its success he began writing full time. A continuing theme of his work was to develop series so that each character had ample opportunities to return in sequels. John Carter was in the Mars series and there was another on Venus and one on Pellucidar among others. But perhaps the best known is Tarzan. Indeed Burroughs wanted so much to capitalise upon the brand that he introduced a syndicated Tarzan comic strip, movies and merchandise. He purchased a large ranch north of Los Angeles, California, which he named "e;Tarzana."e; The surrounding communities outside the ranch voted in 1927 to adopt the name as their own. By 1932 Burroughs set up his own company to print his own books. Here we publish 'Sweetheart Primeval' in the hands of Edgar Rice Burroughs a few steps back in time is just the start of an extraordinary journey.....

The life of William Shakespeare, arguably the most significant figure in the Western literary canon, is relatively unknown. Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1565, possibly on the 23rd April, St. George's Day, and baptised there on 26th April. Little is known of his education and the first firm facts to his life relate to his marriage, aged 18, to Anne Hathaway, who was 26 and from the nearby village of Shottery. Anne gave birth to their first son six months later. Shakespeare's first play, The Comedy of Errors began a procession of real heavyweights that were to emanate from his pen in a career of just over twenty years in which 37 plays were written and his reputation forever established. This early skill was recognised by many and by 1594 the Lord Chamberlain's Men were performing his works. With the advantage of Shakespeare's progressive writing they rapidly became London's leading company of players, affording him more exposure and, following the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, a royal patent by the new king, James I, at which point they changed their name to the King's Men. By 1598, and despite efforts to pirate his work, Shakespeare's name was well known and had become a selling point in its own right on title pages. No plays are attributed to Shakespeare after 1613, and the last few plays he wrote before this time were in collaboration with other writers, one of whom is likely to be John Fletcher who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King's Men. William Shakespeare died two months later on April 23rd, 1616, survived by his wife, two daughters and a legacy of writing that none have since yet eclipsed.

If ever a writer needed an introduction Arthur Conan Doyle would not be considered that man. After all, Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the foremost literary detective of any age. Add to this canon his stories of science fiction and his poems, his historical novels, his plays, his political campaigning, his efforts in establishing a Court Of Appeal and there is little room for anything else. Except he was also an exceptional writer of short stories of the horrific and macabre. Something very different from what you might expect. Born in Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859 at 11 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland. From 1876 - 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh following which he was employed as a doctor on the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and, after his graduation, as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast in 1881. Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than GBP10 (GBP700 today) to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea. The practice was initially not very successful. While waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories and composed his first novel The Mystery of Cloomber. Although he continued to study and practice medicine his career was now firmly set as a writer. And thereafter great works continued to pour out of him.

Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury, in Somerset on April 22nd 1707. His early years were spent on his parents' farm in Dorset before being educated at Eton.An early romance ended disastrously and with it his removal to London and the beginnings of a glittering literary career; he published his first play, at age 21, in 1728.He was prolific, sometimes writing six plays a year, but he did like to poke fun at the authorities. His plays were thought to be the final straw for the authorities in their attempts to bring in a new law. In 1737 The Theatrical Licensing Act was passed. At a stroke political satire was almost impossible. Fielding was rendered mute. Any playwright who was viewed with suspicion by the Government now found an audience difficult to find and therefore Theatre owners now toed the Government line.Fielding was practical with the circumstances and ironically stopped writing to once again take up his career in the practice of law and became a barrister after studying at Middle Temple. By this time he had married Charlotte Craddock, his first wife, and they would go on to have five children. Charlotte died in 1744 but was immortalised as the heroine in both Tom Jones and Amelia. Fielding was put out by the success of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. His reaction was to spur him into writing a novel. In 1741 his first novel was published; the successful Shamela, an anonymous parody of Richardson's novel. Undoubtedly the masterpiece of Fielding's career was the novel Tom Jones, published in 1749. It is a wonderfully and carefully constructed picaresque novel following the convoluted and hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune.Fielding was a consistent anti-Jacobite and a keen supporter of the Church of England. This led to him now being richly rewarded with the position of London's Chief Magistrate. Fielding continued to write and his career both literary and professional continued to climb. In 1749 he joined with his younger half-brother John, to help found what was the nascent forerunner to a London police force, the Bow Street Runners. Fielding's ardent commitment to the cause of justice in the 1750s unfortunately coincided with a rapid deterioration in his health. Such was his decline that in the summer of 1754 he travelled, with Mary and his daughter, to Portugal in search of a cure. Gout, asthma, dropsy and other afflictions forced him to use crutches. His health continued to fail alarmingly.Henry Fielding died in Lisbon two months later on October 8th, 1754.

Sir Henry John Newbolt, CH was born on 6th June 1862 in Bilston, Wolverhampton, the son of the vicar of St Mary's Church, the Rev. Henry Francis Newbolt, and his second wife, Emily nee Stubbs. After his father's death, in 1866, the family moved to Walsall.There Newbolt attended Queen Mary's Grammar School, Walsall, and Caistor Grammar School, from where he gained a scholarship to Clifton College, where he was head of the school and editor of the school magazine. Upon graduation from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1887 and practised until 1899.He married Margaret Edwina nee Duckworth, of the prominent publishing family, and they had two children: Margaret Cecilia (1890) and Arthur Francis (1893).Behind the steady Edwardian facade lay intimate complications; a menage a trois. His wife had a long-running affair with her cousin, Laura Isabella 'Ella' Coltman to whom Newbolt had dedicated one of his own poems and was also involved with. Newbolt divided his time between the two women so there was no jealousy. Although it could equally be argued they divided their time.His first book was a novel, 'Taken from the Enemy' (1892), and this was followed in 1895 by a play, the tragedy, 'Mordred'. But it was with 'Admirals All' (1897), that his reputation was set. There followed further volumes of uplifting verse, including 'The Island Race' (1898), 'The Sailing of the Long-ships' (1902), 'Songs of the Sea' (1904) and 'Songs of the Fleet' (1910). Among the most stirring and patriotically heroic of his poems are the often anthologised 'Vitai Lampada' and 'Drake's Drum'.As well as writing he was also, from October 1900 to September 1904, the editor of the Monthly Review. In 1914, Newbolt published Aladore, a fantasy novel about a bored, dutiful knight who abandons his estate to pursue his heart's desire and woo a half-fae enchantress. As the First World War engulfed Europe, Newbolt, and another 20 British writers, were absorbed into the War Propaganda Bureau. Their talents were put to use promoting Britain's interests and to maintain public opinion in favour of the war.He was knighted in 1915 and became the Controller of Telecommunications at the Foreign Office. Among his war poems was 'The War Films', printed in The Times on 14th October 1916, in reference to the shock cinema audiences felt on seeing footage of the Battle of the Somme.Newbolt was knighted in 1915 and was appointed Companion of Honour in 1922.In 1921 he authored the government Report 'The Teaching of English in England' which helped to establish the foundations for modern English Studies and professionalised the teaching of English Literature. With it he established a canon, and was unequivocal that English must become the linguistic and literary standard throughout the Empire.Newbolt was also part of an inner advisory circle of Asquith's government and also advised on policy in Ireland.Sir Henry John Newbolt, CH died at his home in Campden Hill, Kensington, London, on 19th April 1938, at the age of 75. He is buried in the churchyard of St Mary's church on an island in the lake on the Orchardleigh Estate of the Duckworth family in Somerset.

Writers Editors Critics (WEC) An International Biannual Refereed Journal of English Language and Literature Volume 7 Number 1 (March 2017) ISSN: 2231 - 198X RESEARCH PAPERS The Confessional Voice and Rebellious Cry of Kamala Das as Visualized in her Poetical Works: A Brief Analysis - S. Chelliah The Philosopher-Scientist A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and his World View: A Study - J. Pamela Artificial Intelligence and the Instrumental Marvellous in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Novels - Lekshmi R. Nair Return to Wholeness: The Landscape of Willa Cather's O Pioneers! - Vikas Bhardwaj Nation and Identity Defined through Bodies: A Study of Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man - Sonia Soni Ramesh K. Srivastava's "Under the Lamp": A Study - Shipra G. Vashishtha Reinventing Roots in Esther David's Book of Rachel - Giftsy Dorcas E. A Critical Reading of Authentic Existence in Claude Mckay's Banana Bottom - S. Khethzi Kerena "Write My Son, Write": An Aesthetic and Spiritual Reflection of World by K V Dominic - Laxmi R. Chaughaan Nandini's Sita: A Deep Dive to Every Woman's Journey - Arti Chandel Lives on Pyre: A Socio-realistic Portrayal in D.C. Chambial's The Cargoes of the Bleeding Hearts - Parthajit Ghosh& Dr. Madhu Kamra An Evolution of His Demography: A Socio-cultural Flow in the Fictional World of Manoj Das - Suresh Bera & Somali Gupta Maya Angelou's Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?: a Paroxysm of Confession - Ishita Pramanik & Dr. Shukla Banerjee REVIEW ARTICLES Eco-critical Perspectives in K. V. Dominic & Pamela Jeyaraju's (eds.) Environmental Literature: Research Papers and Poems - S. Barathi T. V. Reddy's Melting Melodies: An Analysis - P. Bayapa Reddy Critical Evaluation of T. V. Reddy's Melting Melodies - Dwarakanath H. Kabadi BOOK REVIEWS T. V. Reddy's Golden Veil: A Collection of Poems - Patricia Prime Ramesh K. Srivastava's My Father's Bad Boy--An Autobiography - Smita Das O. P. Arora's Whispers in the Wilderness: A Collection of Poems - Patricia Prime Vijay Kumar Roy's Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems - Sugandha Agarwal GENERAL ESSAYS Regional Integration in South Asia: A Nepalese Perspective - Shreedhar Gautam Role of Information Library Network (INFLIBNET) in Checking Plagiarism in Indian Universities - P. K. Suresh Kumar Sojourn in Forests - Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya The Commonplace Economic Thoughts of a Seventy Five Years Old Lady - Mousumi Ghosh INTERVIEW Conversation with Subodh Sarkar - Jaydeep Sarangi SHORT STORIES Perils of Simplicity - Ramesh K. Srivastava The Melody Queen - Jayanti M. Dalal (Trans. Dr. Rajshree Parthivv Trivedi) A Strange Reunion --- Chandramoni Narayanaswamy Is Human Life Precious than Animal's? - K. V. Dominic Psychological Effect - Manas Bakshi POEMS Regain the Vision - T. V. Reddy Down the Memory Lane - T. V. Reddy Memories - T. V. Reddy Patiently I Saw - D. C. Chambia

Santa Claus, as a baby is found in the Forest of Burzee and placed in the care of the lioness Shiegra. The Wood Nymph, Necile, breaks the law of the forest and takes the baby because she desires to raise a child of her own as mortals do. Necile calls him Claus, meaning little one in the old Burzee language.

Farther Brown may be walking into a trap when he tries to save his soul as his precious Blue Cross is targeted by the notorious criminal Flambeau.

From the first pages it becomes apparent that Asystole is a novel about love of life in its purest, instinctive and intimate form. It’s also a novel about human faith in its existence and a desire to experience this love. Author Oleg Pavlov places his character – a boy who grows to be a man and is clearly personified by the writer’s own outlook on life – in impossible and familiar circumstances, impossible not to relate to. An adult is shaped in childhood. Chaotic, anxious and at the same time withdrawn narration seems to have no direction and no resolution. Except that the life of the people, who are in fact children of a broken destiny, is real and not much needs to be said to make it our own. Laconic and ‘to the point’ observations of Pavlov’s protagonist as he goes, are chilling at times. They pierce through flesh right to the bone – the quality only the naked truth can have. Asystole is moreover about the by-stander effect, about a disconnected and malfunctioning society and a struggle of one not to merge into the faceless mass of many. Modern, deeply thought through and heartfelt, this novel is an examination of the physics of human soul. Pavlov’s Universe has a special arrangement – if it was up to him, humans wouldn’t be allowed in it, for the privilege of being human requires living up to the title.

Emma Woodhouse, aged 20 at the start of the novel, is a young is a young, beautiful, witty, and privileged woman in Regency England. As the novel opens, Emma has just attended the wedding of Miss Taylor, her best friend and former governess. Having introduced Miss Taylor to her future husband, Mr. Weston, Emma takes credit for their marriage, and decides that she rather likes matchmaking. She greatly overestimates her own matchmaking abilities; she is blind to the dangers of meddling in other people's lives, and her imagination and perceptions often lead her astray.

A psychologically thrilling tale, The Black Monk delves into the murky region between fantasy and reality and asks what separates self-confidence from self-delusion. Our protagonist Andrei Kovrin, a brilliant scholar who takes a leave of absence from academia due to stress, and recuperates at the house of his former guardian Pesotsky. He grows close to Pesotsky’s daughter Tatiana as they tend the orchard together. Kovrin enjoys taking long walks in the garden, and one night he sees a dark, spectral figure and realizes that it is the black monk, whose legend he had just told Tatiana. Upon seeing the monk, Kovrin feels radiant and inspired, and asks for Tania’s hand in marriage. As his romance progresses, Kovrin continues to meet and talk with the monk in the garden. The monk tells him that he is one of God’s chosen, but soon after Kovrin's health begins to deteriorate.

Little Red Riding Hood, a French fairy tale about a young girl and a big bad wolf and thirty three other European tales are featured in this volume of Grimm's tales. Little Red Riding Hood story follows a mean wolf that wants to eat the little girl but is afraid to do so in public. He secretly stalks her behind trees, bushes, and patches of tall grass. He approaches Little Red Riding Hood and she na?vely tells him where she is going.

A group of eccentrics is gathered, each with a single monomaniacal obsession, and derives humour and social satire from their various interactions and conversations.