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Fishing with Wussy

Richard Russo

‘Until I was six I thought of my father the way I thought of ‘my heavenly father’, whose existence was a matter of record, but who was, practically speaking, absent and therefore irrelevant.’

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.’

The Ship at Anchor

Frederic Tuten

‘Those words made me wonder why I ever wanted to be an artist, why I ever wanted to live, though I never thought I wanted to die.’

Scale

Will Self

‘Some people lose their sense of proportion; I've lost my sense of scale.‘

Wavery’s Last Post

Nicholas Shakespeare

‘At five in the afternoon, the Bahia de Abyla sailed out of Algeciras.‘

New World (Part Four)

Jonathan Raban

‘Sleep has disassembled the self: it will take patience to rebuild a person out of the heap of components in the bed.’

In the Light of What We Know

Zia Haider Rahman

‘My wife and I were both the children of Pakistanis, immigrants, Muslims, and we had faith that our union was of things greater than ourselves.’

The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H.

George Steiner

‘At moments Hitler’s head brushed against Gideon’s cheek like a clump of wet leaves.’

The Sex Lives of African Girls

Taiye Selasi

‘She has the most genuine intentions of any woman out there.’

Valdir Peres, Juanito and Poloskei

Antonio Prata

‘The only path to tread, from now on, was downward.’

The Siege of Leningrad

Mikhail Steblin-Kamensky

‘Alexander Ivanovich woke at six, the hour when radio broadcasting would normally have begun, but the radio had been silent for a month now.’

The Emotions are not Skilled Workers

Elliot Perlman

‘He is wrong, though. You didn’t read poetry at all. He had wanted you to read poetry but you didn’t.’

Jesus Who?

Alison Smith

‘Jesus came walking across the lawn, a grin on his face. I waved. “Hi, Jesus.”’

The New Veterans

Karen Russell

‘Pain unwound itself under her palms‘