Explore fiction
The Wind That Lays Waste
Selva Almada
‘Leni’s last image of her mother is from the rear window of the car.’
Granma’s Porch
Alexia Tolas
Alexia Tolas’ Granma’s Porch is the Caribbean regional winner of the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
The Biggest House on Earth
Choi In-Ho
‘What is happiness? Nothing other than pausing at the bottom of the stairs to admire the portrait of a beautiful queen from some distant, foreign land.’
Dolores
Lauren Aimee Curtis
‘There she is: Dolores. Newly named. Sitting at the kitchen table inside the convent, conscious of how bad she must smell.’
Beetle
Joanna Kavenna
An excerpt from ZED, the forthcoming novel by Joanna Kavenna, a Granta Best of Young British Novelist.
Madam’s Sister
Mbozi Haimbe
‘The sister has a headful of fine hair down to the small of her back. The golden colour of maize silk, her weave is not stiff and waxy like Chipo’s, but moves in the breeze.’
The Girls and the Dogs
Kevin Barry
‘Maurice turns left, turns right, to loosen out the kinks in his neck. Images slice through him.’
Death Customs
Constantia Soteriou
Constantia Soteriou’s ‘Death Customs’, translated from the Greek by Lina Protopapa, is the regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2018 for Canada and Europe.
All silky and wonderful
Ben Pester
A trip on a commuter train takes a surreal turn in new fiction by Ben Pester.
My Mother Pattu
Saraswathy M. Manickam
Saraswathy M. Manickam’s ‘My Mother Pattu’ is the Asian regional winner of the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Screaming
Harley Hern
Harley Hern’s ‘Screaming’ is the Pacific regional winner of the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
A Season on Earth
Gerald Murnane
‘He had forgotten in the seminary how many distractions there were in the world.’
The Sole Purveyor of Madame Bovary in Beijing circa 1989
Amanda Lee Koe
‘In the day, his bevy of besotted rustics were coached in maxims of libertarian socialism. By night: rice wine orgies and folk punk sing-alongs.’
Loudermilk
Lucy Ives
‘The bro has a pair of plump dogs over which he deploys nauseating quantities of ketchup.’
Lucy Ives and Niina Pollari In Conversation
Lucy Ives & Niina Pollari
‘For me, narratives are always tied to and emerging from other narratives; there is no single beginning, no origin.’
Rules for Visiting
Jessica Francis Kane
‘It wasn’t until the end of dinner, when my aunt started clearing and my grandmother demanded another bottle of wine, that I began to understand.’
American Girl and Boy from Shobrakheit
Noor Naga
‘Question: is romance just a father who never carried you to bed carrying you, at last, to bed?’
The Summer After the War
Kazuo Ishiguro
‘As it was, my grandfather began helping me to paint without my having to ask him.’
Evensong
Todd McEwen
‘Characteristically my wife refused to be drawn into the situation while I became obsessed with it.’
Menudo
Raymond Carver
‘Vicky says I’m crazy. She said worse things too last night. But who could blame her?’
The Little Winter
Joy Williams
‘She remembered being happy off and on that day, and then looking at things and finding it all unkind.’
At Yankee Stadium
Don DeLillo
‘From a series of linked couples they become one continuous wave, larger all the time.’
Agnes of Iowa
Lorrie Moore
‘Through college she had been a feminist – more or less. She shaved her legs, but just not often enough, she liked to say.’
Always the Same Snow and Always the Same Uncle
Herta Müller
‘Who knows: what I write I must eat, what I don’t write – eats me.’
A Man’s Life
Pajtim Statovci
‘I wished my family would die, my friends too, everybody I knew, because only that way could they never follow me wherever I went.’
My Enemy’s Cherry Tree
Wang Ting-Kuo
‘And the truth is, my heart was tied in knots, and pain bored into the marrow of my bones when I heard about his illness.’
Oval
Elvia Wilk
‘We’re trying to prove that it’s possible to live sustainably and not be such a freak about it.’
