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Night in the Afternoon

Caroline Lamarche

‘A little entrance hall. A staircase. To the left of the staircase, a door with a window leading into the concierge's room.’

Don’t Forsake Me

Ivan Klíma

'Bára went to the church on the advice of her friend Ivana. She had been suffering from occasional bouts of depression', Ivan Klíma in 'Don't Forsake Me' in Granta 59: France: The Outsider.

Make Him Sing

J.M. Coetzee

‘He expects astonishment and sympathy; instead he gets mirth.’

Lover

Joyce Carol Oates

‘You won't know me, won't see my face. Unless you see my face. And then it will be too late.’

The Vulgar Soul

John Biguenet

‘She got skinny and became a clairvoyant. And she wasn't even a stigmatic.’

Kashmir

James Buchan

‘I see in an instant what has brought people to the valley for four centuries.’

Five Hours to Simla

Anita Desai

‘He had his hands deep in his pockets, and his face was lined with a frown deeply embedded with dust.’

Kabir Street

R. K. Narayan

‘Nagaraj had begun to have doubts about his standing in his ancestral home’

Waking

Amit Chaudhuri

‘Her eyes, in a face puffed with sleep, opened, red and unfocused.’

The Enemy Within

John Banville

‘Feeling almost skittish all day. Exhausted now yet feverish also, like a child at the end of a party.’

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Duncan McLean

‘I thought I heard the woman next door crying’

Trying to Understand

Philip Hensher

‘I liked his humourless intelligence, so redundant and so excessive in an MP.’

In a Blue Time

Hanif Kureishi

‘When the phone rings, who do you most want it to be?’