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Year of the Monkey

Fan Wu

‘I stood in front of the roller coaster, whose winding tracks looked like intestines in a demon's stomach.’

Hawk

Joy Williams

‘As regards to life it is much the best to think that the experiences we have are necessary for us.’

The Last Thing We Need

Claire Vaye Watkins

‘I think there will be lightning tonight; the air has that feel.’

A Lovely and Terrible Thing

Chris Womersley

‘For a moment I could not speak. I looked off into the bleak distance, then at this man, and there was something about the sad shake of his head and the way his hair flapped about on his scalp that filled me with unreasonable warmth.’

Give it up for Billy

Edmund White

‘Were there moral cataracts that one could remove?’

Frogs

Mo Yan

‘Once the preposterous reality set in, we were overcome by sadness.’

In The Tunnel

John Wray

‘It was a question of not thinking about what you were doing.’

Nuestra Señora de la Asunción

Lina Wolff

‘No one here is normal except you, and you’re not even from Spain.’

The Barracks Thief

Tobias Wolff

‘What sort of a man would turn his back on his own kind?’

Tomorrow, upon Awakening

Antônio Xerxenesky

‘He more than anybody else needs to define his symbols for the year to com.’

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.’

Wheels of Progress

Gemini Wahhaj

‘Now Bangladesh survives only on aid, on other people feeding its people.’

In Lana Turner’s Bedroom

Gaby Wood

‘It was because it was night-time and raining that I decided to drive up to Lana Turner's old house in Beverly Hills.’

After Ida

Elise Winn

‘The year I turned seventeen, the cicada chorus was deafening, as if they were impatient for the real beginning of summer and didn’t realize they were it.’