Explore fiction
Domain
Louise Erdrich
‘Seven corporations control the afterlife now, and many people spend their lives amassing the money to upload into the best.’
Dragons
Julian Barnes
‘Everything bad came from the north. Whatever else they believed, the whole town, both parts of it, knew that.’
Emma Bovary’s Eyes
Julian Barnes
‘Her eyes are black: passion and depth. Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy. Her eyes are brown: reliability and ordinariness. Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler.‘
Eternal Love
Karen E. Bender
‘After Lena and Bob were married in the Chapel of Eternal Love, Ella told them that new husbands and wives were not allowed to share a hotel bedroom.’
Extracts From The Journal Of Flying Officer J
William Boyd
‘The squadron left today for the city. The mess cold and sad, Verschoyle, with uncharacteristic generosity, said I could keep the monoplane.’
Feet
Seamus Deane
‘That was my first death. When the priest tossed the first three shovelfuls of clay on to the coffin, the clattering sound seemed to ring all over the hillside graveyard and my father's face moved sideways as if he had been struck.’
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.’
Fit Mother
Peter Ho Davies
‘The court had given me six months to prove I was a responsible adult and a fit mother’.
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.’
Foreign Buddies
Ursula Bentley
‘She had to explain this, and the thought crossed her mind to dwell on this personal note, to put out a feeler to test Christina's reaction to the idea of sexual experiment.’
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’.
From the Journals of Mahmoud Darwish 1941–2008
Mahmoud Darwish
‘I’m alive even though I feel no pain.’
Furniture of Desire
Walter Abish
‘It took him only a moment to eliminate all doubt. The opportunity was ripe.’
Gift for a Sweetheart
Isabel Allende
‘Horacio Fortunato was forty-six when the languid Jewish woman who was to change his roguish ways and deflate his fanfaronade entered his life.’
Gifted
Segun Afolabi
‘The boys' eyes grazed the carpet and then each other guiltily. The youngest tried not to smile with shame.’
Girl on Girl
Diane Cook
‘Marni on Mack. Mack in Marni. A little Mack and Marni. My head rushes. I want to watch, hear the sounds.’
Glow
Ned Beauman
‘Growing up, you got so used to all your secrets being sad or shameful that you came to assume they were, like alkyl halides, intrinsically neurotoxic, and now he had learned for the first time that they weren’t.’
Gnossienne
Julian Barnes
‘Let me make it clear that I never attend literary conferences. I know that they're held in art deco hotels close to legendary museums; that sessions on the future of the novel are conducted with camaraderie, brio and bonhomie.’
Gothic Night
Mansoura Ez Eldin
‘He wrote: they called it the city of eternal sun. Its sun set only after the last inhabitant slept, and rose before the first got up. They were all deprived of the night. They were not even aware of its existence.’
Grand Rounds
Chris Adrian
‘I am more of a practice person than a theory person. Not that there’s anything wrong with theory people.’
Greasy Lake
T. Coraghessan Boyle
‘I contemplated the car. It lay there like a wreck along the highway, like a steel sculpture left over from a vanished civilization.’
Harmony
Julian Barnes
‘They had dined well at no. 261 Landstrasse, and now passed eagerly into the music room.’
Here Is What You Do
Chris Dennis
‘It’s like there’s a piece of candy hidden deep inside you and everyone is trying to find the easiest way to get it out.’
How Great Thou Art
Graham Coster
‘At the very end we came upon him – others had seen him from time to time, and reported that he was still out there – and he was bigger even than we had expected.’
Human Moments in World War III
Don DeLillo
‘Happiness is not a fact of this experience, at least not to the extent that one is bold enough to speak of it.’
Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte
Kazushige Abe
‘The crucial thing was to cool the baby off, bring the fever down.’
