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The Modern Common Wind

Don Bloch

‘Leprosy. It is such an infectious disease it cannot stop with death. Did it stop with the death of Asha Makokha? Tell me, if you think I am wrong.’

Mungo Among the Moors

T. Coraghessan Boyle

‘At an age when most young Scotsmen were lifting skirts, ploughing furrows and spreading seed, Mungo Park was displaying his bare buttocks to al-haff Ali Ibn Fatoudi, Emir of Ludamar.’

Keepers Of The House

Lisa St Aubin de Terán

‘Lydia Sinclair was just seventeen when she arrived on her husband's estate in the Andes.’ Lisa St Aubin de Terán's fictional memoir.

The Anatomy Of Desire

John L’Heureux

‘He kissed her and caressed her and felt young and whole again. He did not miss his wife and children. He did not miss his skin.’

The Salt Wife

Ted Mooney

'Martha worked in a radio-biology lab in Manhattan, and when Larry, her husband of seven years, left her at last for the cause of art, she decided to accept a long-standing invitation from a lab in Los Angeles to visit their operation and talk about her work.'

The Dead Girls

Jorge Ibargüengoitia

'For years it seemed like God was with them. While my husband and Iost everything three times through honest work, my sisters were getting rich off immorality.'

Fifty-Seven Views of Fujiyama

Guy Davenport

‘So Sora, to be worthy of the beauty of the world, shaved his head the day we departed, and donned a wandering priest’s black robe, and took yet a third name, Sogo, which means Enlightened, for the road.’

Lucy

Lisa Zeidner

‘I needed to sit on two dictionaries to reach the piano, which was respectable, black and dimly European.’

The Drawer

Nicole Ward Jouve

‘A husband was a leech. Sucked, sucked your substance, and no feedback ever, and where were you to refuel?’

Let Me Count The Times

Martin Amis

‘Vernon made love to his wife three and a half times a week, and this was all right.’

Sherry Fine: Conceptualist

Kenneth Bernard

‘When Jimmy Dellapiccolo first met her, she was in a SoHo gallery masturbating.’

Vitamins

Raymond Carver

‘I worked a few hours a night for the hospital. It was a nothing job. I did some work, signed the card for eight hours, went drinking with the nurses.’

Midnight’s Children

Salman Rushdie

‘He resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man.’

An extract from Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

Southern Birds

Desmond Hogan

‘She was like a nun who wanted her body for herself but being generous gave it freely.’