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Signal

Zakia Uddin

‘I had begun to google the therapist reflexively whenever I was bored.’

A short story by Zakia Uddin.

Clara’s Parrot

Hebe Uhart

‘He laughs with a human laugh, a sinister and forceful cackle.’

Newly translated work from the Argentine writer Hebe Uhart.

Poor Lucky Kolyvanova

Ludmila Ulitskaya

‘The red girls’ school stood opposite a grey boys’ school, built five years after it as if to proclaim the rational symmetry of the world.’

Just the Plague

Ludmila Ulitskaya

‘It seems to be more than he can cope with.’

An excerpt from Ulitskaya’s newly translated novel Just the Plague.

The Island

Jack Underwood

‘She draws from her mind the image of a giant steel girder, pictures it smashing through the wall of the bar, obliterating everything, legs and arms reaching and waving.’

Sorry to Disturb You

Jack Underwood

The only thing scarier than ghosts are the ghosts working at a call center.

Open Water

Deb Olin Unferth

She had already imagined it all, so much so that when she finally did see him, she felt unable to speak.

Barn 8

Deb Olin Unferth

A novel exploring the terrible logic of the US egg industry.

To the Ocean

Deb Olin Unferth

‘At the desk they said they encouraged guests not to walk, but she was determined’

The Lens Factory

John Updike

‘It made him feel lopsided, this sense of being plucked at by nervousness and dread.’

The Picnic Pavilion

Debbie Urbanski

‘They are wearing dresses. I am not wearing a dress. Another difference is they’re dead and I am not dead.’

Debbie Urbanski on the BRCA1 gene.

The Invisible Harbour

Deniz Utlu

‘Only from a distance does the observer understand the object that remained an enigma from close up.’

Fiction by Deniz Utlu, translated by Jackie Smith.

A Brief History of Fire

Jennifer Vanderbes

‘My happiness was so deep I was afraid to speak of it.’

Borne

Jeff VanderMeer

‘The map of the old horizon was like being haunted by a grotesque fairy tale, something that when voiced came out not as words but as sounds in the aftermath of an atrocity.’