Explore Fiction
Sort by:
Sort by:
4 3 2 1: Overture
Paul Auster
‘According to family legend, Ferguson’s grandfather departed on foot from his native city of Minsk with one hundred rubles sewn into the lining of his jacket’
from Long Talking Bad Conditions Blues
Ronald Sukenick
‘when rising expectations hit the upcoming decline hell was going to break loose it was already starting to break loose’
from Son of the Morning
Joyce Carol Oates
‘The livingness of the rifle and the bullet and the death spasm and his own bright quickening blood: never would he forget.’
from The Franchiser
Stanley Elkin
‘In sickness he understood what he never had in health, that his body, anyone’s, everyone’s, was something for the public record.’
Requa-I
Tillie Olsen
‘Night scratched at the window and seeped from the room corners. No other sound but rising river wind.’
A Battle
Patrick Süskind
‘Early one August evening, when most people had already left the park, two men sat confronting one another across a chessboard.’
A Beheading
Mohsin Hamid
‘The words are just dribbling out of my mouth. I can’t stop them. They’re like tears.’
A Certain King
Jennifer Atkins
‘I didn’t think she was happy; I thought she was in love, but I didn’t know what that told me, if it told me anything.’
Fiction by Jennifer Atkins.
A Child’s Book of Death and Dying
Abraham Verghese
‘A fine morning mist had rolled down over Addis Ababa from the Entoto mountains, leaving a sheen on the lawn between the apartment buildings'.
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.
