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If You Kept a Record of Sins

Andrea Bajani

‘It’s like a second gestation, like entering the world a second time.’

An excerpt from Andrea Bajani’s novel If You Kept a Record of Sins, available from Archipelago Books. Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris.

Second Place

Rachel Cusk

‘I stepped around as joyfully as a faun in a forest on the first day of creation.’

An excerpt from Rachel Cusk’s new novel.

Juancho, Baile

José Ardila

‘All of us connected by this kind of universal sunstroke.’

Fiction by José Ardila, translated by Lindsay Griffiths and Adrián Izquierdo.

Capsule

Mateo García Elizondo

‘I wish I could entrust my life to a more solid structure, but whatever. It’s not like anyone gets to file complaints around here.’

Fiction by Mateo García Elizondo, translated by Robin Myers.

Uninhabitants

Gonzalo Baz

‘The day we moved into the neighborhood, the house next door was in ruins, it was an inaccessible, absent place.’

Fiction by Gonzalo Baz, translated by Christina MacSweeney.

Kingdoms

Miluska Benavides

‘The day of the explosion, Bautista made his way through the camp as he had the previous days, months and years.’

Fiction by Miluska Benavides, translated by Katherine Silver.

Insomnia of the Statues

David Aliaga

‘Montreal was becoming smudged with snow and night.’

Fiction by David Aliaga, translated by Daniel Hahn.

Our Windowless Home

Martín Felipe Castagnet

‘It was important to touch them, a ritual to wake them up and keep them alive.’

Fiction by Martín Felipe Castagnet, translated by Frances Riddle.

Borromean Rings

Andrea Chapela

‘If I could make just one call, I’d dial the bar in Madrid.’

Fiction by Andrea Chapela, translated by Kelsi Vanada.

The New Me

Andrea Abreu

‘Needy text messages did not mesh with my new personality.’

Fiction by Andrea Abreu, translated by Julia Sanches.

The Coming Bad Days

Sarah Bernstein

‘I began to appreciate being amongst things that were mine only. I cleaned with a puritanical zeal.’

An excerpt from Sarah Bernstein’s debut novel, The Coming Bad Days.

House of Flies

Claudia Durastanti

‘The disappointment only spread later, like an odorless gas seeping through the pipes, and the only complaints heard were from old people wandering around anxiously in the fog.’

Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris.

Selected

Sam Byers

‘Across the country, at any given moment lives are unravelling in rooms of crushing uniformity.’

Return

Niki Bañados

An excerpt from the graphic novel, Return, by Niki Bañados.