The Ballad of Reading Gaol the poem was chosen as the epitaph on Wilde's tomb; <poem>And alien tears will fill for him, For his mourners will be outcast men, <poem>So with curious eyes and sick surmise We watched him day by day, And wondered if each one of us Would end the self-same way, For none can tell to what red Hell His sightless soul may stray.</poem> The Ballad of Reading Gaol The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol () on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading
The Ballad of a Small Player by Tom Shone in "The New York Times". China scholar Paul French in the "Los Angeles Review of Books" wrote: "I'll come right out and say it... Osborne's novel is the best on contemporary China since Malraux's." The Ballad of a Small Player The Ballad of a Small Player is a 2014 novel by British writer Lawrence Osborne. Set in the gambling casinos of Macau, it follows the fortunes of an English con man who passes himself off as a runaway Lord. Part ghost story, part psychological thriller, it earned Osborne comparisons with Graham Greene and Dostoievsky. The novel was