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Ruins in Reverse

Carlos Fonseca

‘I couldn’t remember the dates, so anything was possible.’

Fiction by Carlos Fonseca, translated by Megan McDowell.

Nobody Knows What They’re Doing

Camila Fabbri

‘In that instant my sisters were two animals about to work some shit out.’

Fiction by Camila Fabbri, translated by Jennifer Croft.

Wanjala

Estanislao Medina Huesca

‘Heriberto blamed Spain. He always did.’

Fiction by Estanislao Medina Huesca, translated by Mara Faye Lethem.

Vital Signs

Munir Hachemi

‘She smelled of liquor, and death, and veal.’

Fiction by Munir Hachemi, translated by Nick Caistor.

A Perfect Cemetery

Federico Falco

An excerpt from Federico Falco’s story collection A Perfect Cemetery.

Fat Bodies

Forsyth Harmon

‘Justine was at my lab table, pulling at the ends of her black bob, shoving her hair into her mouth.’

An excerpt from Justine, out with Tin House Books.

Creep

Caoilinn Hughes

‘She hadn’t been skiing since her master’s in Iceland, back when glaciers had some heft to them, though slackened and fast-diminishing as the legs of a retired cyclist.’

The High House

Jessie Greengrass

‘All those who might have lived instead of us are gone, or they are starving, while we stay on here at the high house, pulling potatoes from soft earth.’

Pretty Polly

Shinichi Hoshi

‘Compared to all of you, I’m not the handsomest guy or the smartest, which might’ve caused me all sorts of grief if I was a landlubber. But I spent my life at sea, so I got by.’

An Unnecessary Man

Maha Harada

‘I’d lived for half a century, but I had no sense of what that meant; no particular reaction.’

The Bookmobile

Kotaro Isaka

‘He told me he had quit his job the day after the earthquake and came out here with nothing but a sleeping bag.’

It Was a Dog

Amaryllis Gacioppo

‘She liked to eat until her thighs felt gelatinous and slick with sweat, and her stomach ballooned out, sore and firm as though she had drunk cement that had now set.’

The Temptation of St Anthony

Mark Haddon

‘He had not eaten today nor had he drunk. He would wait until the craving had passed, then allow himself to do both when it became a choice, not a lost battle in his long war against the base needs of the body.’

‘Doe Lea’

M. John Harrison

‘He was already suffering the attacks that would characterise the later stages of the illness, during which lights seemed to dance on the surface of everything. They were blue, lilac, pink and green, he said.’