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A Ghost in Brazil

Kikuko Tsumura

‘I was ever so keen to visit the Aran Islands, but unfortunately, I died before ever making it out of Japan.’

Larger Than the Night

Masatsugu Ono

‘The night was sealed off completely – or so it seemed.’

Girl Games

Makena Onjerika

‘There, behind glass panes separating you from the good children, from life itself, you are kept company by your dread.’

The Hole

Hiroko Oyamada

‘The hole felt as though it was exactly my size – a trap made just for me.’

Nocturne

Yūshō Takiguchi

Jesse Kirkwood’s translation of ‘Nocturne’ by Yūshō Takiguchi is the winner of the 2020 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize.

Selfish Little Thing

Olivia Rosenthall

‘I began to lie awake at night thinking about all the terrible things I’d ever done, listing them quietly in my head, each selfish little thing, my body numb with guilt.’

Sleeping Beauty

Laura Demers

‘It’s normal not to be offered anything to eat or drink when you are a princess.’

Slobber and Drool

Jess Arndt

‘My face, not the glass, was blurry. I had no idea what I really looked like besides lumpy, fuzzy, profuse.’

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.’

Messrs. External & Bodily

Helen Marten

‘Space is marked and people do their best, but somewhere somebody made a false prophecy for the land.’

Pinky Agarwalia: Biography of a Child Saint in Ten Parts

Bhanu Kapil

‘Every person who travelled here is unsteady, I can feel that.’

Ogadinma

Ukamaka Olisakwe

‘She began to count; it was easier this way, counting, because she would not have to remember how she felt. She only had to remember how long she had counted.’

Alphonse

Marie-Hélène Lafon

‘He was long and white; his hands especially were long and white, and he sewed; he looked after the linen; he worked as a woman would; he lived in the house; he didn’t speak, he was rarely spoken to.’

Translated from the French by Stephanie Smee.

The Appointment

Katharina Volckmer

‘I know that I can trust you, and that death is silent. It’s never the loud things that kill us, the things that make us vomit and scream and cry. Those things are just looking for attention.’