Explore fiction
The Seventh Man
Haruki Murakami
‘I looked up at the sky. A few grey cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless.’
The Husband Stitch
Carmen Maria Machado
‘I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.’
Runs Girl | New Voices
Chinelo Okparanta
‘The year Mama fell sick was the year Njideka confessed to me that she was a runs girl.’
The Dune
Stephen King
‘Being able to read obituaries in advance gives a man an extraordinary sense of power.’
Remission
Adam Mars-Jones
‘There's an awkward interval, when you're ill but not yet conditioned by illness.’
Night
Alice Munro
‘The thought was there and hanging on to my mind. The thought that I could strangle my little sister, who was asleep in the bunk below me and whom I loved more than anybody in the world.’
River So Close
Melinda Moustakis
‘She’s a good-for-nothing chummer. If she survives a week on the slime line without cutting off her thumb or slicing her wrist, she’s hired.’
The Bridge
David Mamet
‘Surely the world was going to end. And probably in fire - in nuclear destruction, by mistake, or at the hands of madmen.’
Accident
Etgar Keret
’Thirty years I’m a cabbie,’ the small guy sitting behind the wheel tells me, ’thirty years and not one accident.’
Small Differences
Catherine Lacey
‘Everyone should just sit very still until they reach the calmer waters of later-young-adulthood, that promised land of lowered expectations.’
The Captain
Rattawut Lapcharoensap
‘I was with Dora. We were in love. Things were cheap and plentiful and the money from the insurance was going to last us forever.’
Five Houses
Melanie McFadyean
‘I live here, we say, this is my house, my home. We settle, dwell, adorn. A house feels permanent. But this illusion of security can end in a minute.’
Crow Fair
Thomas McGuane
‘You’re in a different world when your own mother doesn’t recognize you, or thinks you’re the stranger who gave her a hickey.’
Thank You for Having Me
Lorrie Moore
‘Every day there was something new to mourn and something old to celebrate.’
The Chronicle of the Wrinkled-Face Sheikh
Salman Natour
‘No other inanimate object retains emotion as strongly as keys do. Fingerprints are engraved on them as if the laws of wear and tear do not apply.’
The Whale House
Sharon Millar
‘By morning the dreams are gone, flying through the tiny holes in the net in sudden starling movements.’
A Clean Marriage
Sayaka Murata
‘Frequency of sex since marriage: zero.’ Sayaka Murata on a sexless marriage and the ‘Clean Breeder’ technique for pleasureless reproduction.
Mouth
Mario Vargas Llosa
‘I lost my left ear from a bite. . .Through the thin slit that remains I can hear the sounds of the world.’
Final Fantasy III
Tao Lin
‘On the F train to Manhattan I emailed a friend in the UK. I said I couldn’t write my essay about Japan.’
OIF
Phil Klay
‘A few months later I was strapped up, M4 in condition 1, surrounded by 03s, backpack full of cash, twitchiest guy in Iraq.’
Kinder Than Solitude
Yiyun Li
‘Being let down was Celia’s fate; life never failed to bestow upon her pain and disappointment she had to suffer on everyone’s behalf, so that the world could go on being a good place, free from real calamities.’
The War Artist
Margaret Luongo
‘On the third day, the little rosebud teacups rattled in their saucers as the war artist poured the coffee.’
Two Girls in a Boat
Emma Martin
‘This was a tiredness that caused Hannah to walk into a travel agent in Clapham High Street on a grey Tuesday morning and buy a ticket to New Zealand.’
The Moon and the Batteries
Hiromi Kawakami
‘His full name was Mr Harutsuna Matsumoto, but I called him ‘Sensei’. Not ‘Mr’ or ‘Sir’, just ‘Sensei’.’
