After Helena
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Room After Room
Jonathan Safran Foer
‘Her heart is kept in a room with a very expensive security system.’
Where East Meets West
Nell Freudenberger
‘How can we presume to know what other people's experiences are like?’
Exile
Olga Grushin
‘For one instant, while all this seemed possible, he listened to the violent unfolding of his heart.’
Passover in New Orleans
Dara Horn
‘The moon was bright and round, as it always is on Passover, like a coin resting on the moist black velvet of the spring night sky.’
Hard Core
Gabe Hudson
‘My buddy Meat’s the one who showed me the true joy of handling the M203.’
Gabe Hudson in Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists 2.
Dance Cadaverous
Uzodinma Iweala
‘It just seemed like the right thing to want, the right thing to do.’
My Painter
Nicole Krauss
‘My painter caught me in a moment that is somehow rare and yet not uncharacteristic.’
Valets
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
‘It’s a slow night again. The other valets are out back playing pétanque with the kitchen staff.’
The Barn at The End of Our Term
Karen Russell
‘Eleven of the stabled horses are, as far as Rutherford can ascertain, former presidents of the United States of America.’
Mother And Son
Akhil Sharma
‘I also tried holding my breath for a moment longer than necessary and asking God to give the unused breaths to Birju.’
From The Diaries of Lenny Abramov
Gary Shteyngart
‘Today, I’ve made a major decision: I am never going to die.’
War Zones: Introduction
Ian Jack
‘Feelings of hate and despair dwindle as they pass down the generations.’
The Limeroom
John Burnside
‘I was discovering this deep reserve of patience I never knew I had, and I was surprised at how rich it was.’
The Courthouse
Tahmima Anam
‘If I had known it would put a continent between me and my children I would have killed that map-maker myself.’
Tokyo Year Zero
David Peace
‘The song, the voice, and the heat; men on their knees, heads in hands, sobbing and now howling.’
The Bastard of Istanbul
Elif Shafak
‘She squinted, sighed a conflicted sigh and then unleashed another profanity, only this time against the rain.’
Trident
James Buchan
‘As many as thirty-five states in the world are thought to have the capacity (if not the wish) to build a nuclear weapon.’
The Little Museum of Memory
Mark Slouka
‘Maybe they're worried that their absence will be noticed. Maybe they just want to come home.’
Thank God We’ve Got A Navy
Brian Thompson
‘Today it is usual—especially among those who have never faced conscription—to describe national service as time wasted, even an offence against civil liberties in some sinister way.’
Loved Ones: Introduction
Ian Jack
One of the world's unfair divisions is that between the writer and the written-about, and this is nowhere more true than in the literary form called the memoir.
Help, Help, Help
Jonathan Taylor
‘Day in, day out, my father had to watch us smiling and laughing, while he couldn't join.’
Five Houses
Melanie McFadyean
‘I live here, we say, this is my house, my home. We settle, dwell, adorn. A house feels permanent. But this illusion of security can end in a minute.’
Early Retirement
John Lanchester
‘My father used to tell the story of a tutor at his university, a Viennese professor of something or other.’
