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A Few Words about Fake Breasts
Nell Boeschenstein
‘You repeat this over and over. You pinch your nipples harder. Then harder and harder still. You twist them. You dare them to say Mercy. You stare into your own eyes that are watching you from the mirror.’
A Summer of Japanese Literature
Dan Bradley
From manga to crime fiction, contemporary literature to Nobel-Prize-winning classics, here are ten works of Japanese literature worth spending your summer on
Acts of Infidelity
Lena Andersson
‘Anticipation made it difficult for Ester to swallow.’ Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel.
Amy Bloom | Five Things Right Now
Amy Bloom
Amy Bloom shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about right now.
Best Book of 1919: The Years Between by Rudyard Kipling
Robert Chandler
Robert Chandler on why The Years Between by Rudyard Kipling is the best book of 1919
Best Book of 1953/1994: Trans-Atlantyk
Jennifer Croft
‘The most Polish novel of the twentieth century was written in Argentina and published in France.’
Best Book of 1996: The Lost Lunar Baedeker
Natalie Eilbert
‘Mina Loy has been a preferred voice in my head, echoing with a signature delirious chant as a kind of primordial poetry mother.’
Best Book of 2009: William Vollmann’s Imperial
Sam Byers
Sam Byers on why William Vollmann’s Imperial is the best book of 2009
Best Book of 2011: Kingdom Animalia
Nell Boeschenstein
‘As the title suggests, this is a book about the family of animals, the family of man, and the family of family.’
Breasts: A History
Krys Malcolm Belc
‘My breasts are shrinking. As my fat redistributes it settles in my belly and leaves my chest.’
Carys Davies | Notes on Craft
Carys Davies
‘All good stories are both resonant and concrete; they live in the mind of the reader and reverberate beyond the pages of the book.’
Cassiopeia (three back-to-front songs)
Diana Anphimiadi
‘Anyway, I did not die. / I lined the sky, inside-out.’ Translated from the Georgian by Jean Sprackland and Natalia Bukia-Peters.
Cowboys and Angels
Chelsea Bieker
‘I had me a cowboy once on a hot steam Friday night.’ New fiction from Chelsea Bieker.
Danny Denton | Notes on Craft
Danny Denton
‘My tuppence on craft is this: as a writer, you must give your reader space to experience the world of your story (whatever form it takes)’
Dog
Nadeem Aslam
‘More than once the new dog was aggressive, a stab of fire, but I did not tell the grown-ups. I feared they would take him away.’
Every Day Was Ordinary
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
‘A life is an open thing / leaking out into / the air around it.’
Faltering Song
Danny Denton
‘Didn’t we remember lyrics fine before we had the internet in our pockets?’ Danny Denton on the lost art of sing-songing.
Full Moon on a Dark Night
Soumya Sankar Bose
A new photo-essay by Soumya Sankar Bose that recreates the dreams of his LGBT friends in India.
Ghillie’s Mum
Lynda Clark
‘Social services gave Mum a whole list of conditions she had to adhere to. She wasn’t allowed to be animals anymore, under any circumstances, or they would take Ghillie away from her.’
I Bite My Friends
Fernanda Eberstadt
‘The Easter Parade is winding down, when I spot Him. Her. Them. The Apparition.’
I Will Never See the World Again
Ahmet Altan
‘I was in a cage because a man had eaten an apple.’ Translated from the Turkish by Yasemin Çongar.
I’ve Seen the Future, Baby; It Is Murder
Tara Isabella Burton
‘It was not very comfortable, but the appeal of it was that we did not like each other.’
It’s Only Skin
Lily Dunn
‘I knew what it was to be an object of desire, and to be submissive.’ Lily Dunn on being a painter's model as a girl.
Karl Kraus and Veza
Elias Canetti
‘It was natural that the rumors about both these people should reach me at the same time; they came from the same source, from which everything new for me came at that time.’
Kent Will Tear Us Apart
Neil Belton
All the Devils Are Here was cursed with the status of a cult classic. It’s a book that people who’ve read it, especially writers, can never forget.
Kudos
Rachel Cusk
An extract from Kudos, the final novel in Rachel Cusk’s trilogy, following Outline and Transit.
Letter from Zaria
Pwaangulongii Dauod
Memoir by Pwaangulongii Dauod, who writes from Zaria, Nigeria.
