Translated from the Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen


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Translated from the Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen
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‘The issue was the first of its kind. Trust me, it said. I know what I am talking about. These young writers are the future of literature. Watch. History will prove me right.’ – Bill Buford, Granta editor (1979-95)
‘Cover your nose and mouth, the order came, swift and useless; if they’d had their turbans they would have wound them around their faces but there were only the balaclavas.’
Fiction by Kamila Shamsie from the 2013 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘She felt exhausted, emptied out; she thought of the day that had passed – it was astonishing to her, that a single set of hours could contain so many separate states of violent feeling.’
Fiction by Sarah Waters from the 2003 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘This is the one thing I know from the minute I lift the receiver and slip that voice inside my ear: it will happen.’
Fiction by A.L. Kennedy from the 1993 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘As it was, my grandfather began helping me to paint without my having to ask him.’
Fiction by Kazuo Ishiguro from the 1983 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
A Yi’s books include the novel A Perfect Crime and the collections Grey Stories and The Bird Saw Me. His work has appeared in the Guardian and Paper Republic. He is the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Chutzpah. He lives in Beijing.
More about the author →‘A man will only return to his birthplace in the countryside when he is dead. This is our reality.’
‘Once I came home at the end of August, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Indeed, nothing had.‘
‘Places don’t always remember what they are.’
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo talks about her novel When We Were Birds.
‘Fiction, even if it’s completely made up, does say something about how you experience reality.’
Mary Gaitskill talks about her book The Devil’s Treasure.
‘Her dreams were interrupted occasionally by the sound of the cow and her newborn calf from the outhouse sheds. A low bellow would crinkle the folds of her mind and then seconds later it would be answered from some other shed in the distance.’
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