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The Grief of Strangers

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

‘Chinechelum said little as her mother drove her to the airport.’

Gifted

Segun Afolabi

‘The boys' eyes grazed the carpet and then each other guiltily. The youngest tried not to smile with shame.’

Trident

James Buchan

‘As many as thirty-five states in the world are thought to have the capacity (if not the wish) to build a nuclear weapon.’

Fit Mother

Peter Ho Davies

‘The court had given me six months to prove I was a responsible adult and a fit mother’.

Parakeets

Kevin Brockmeier

‘The birds studied the mute as though he were a puzzle.’

Democracy

Joseph Brodsky

‘Nothing, really, Petrovich. That Georgian, you know, that foreign minister of theirs, says that half an hour ago, Himself announced at a press conference that democracy is being introduced here.’

Abingdon Square

André Aciman

‘Your problem is not that you misread signs; it’s that you see them everywhere.’

Hush . . . Hush Sweet Charlotte

Kazushige Abe

‘The crucial thing was to cool the baby off, bring the fever down.’

Marriage Lines

Julian Barnes

‘Grief was in charge of him.’

The Visiting Child

Karen E. Bender

‘Jane needed a stranger in the kitchen, someone to speak because she could not.’

The Bridge

Daniel Alarcón

‘There was no question we were underwater.’

Money

Martin Amis

‘How did I get like this? It can’t just be the booze and all the junk food I put away. I must have been booked in for this a long time ago.’

White Sands

Geoff Dyer

‘Now that we were out of danger it seemed possible that there had never been any danger.’

Vampire

Robert Coover

‘His wife comes in, baring, with a wink, her incisors, and offers him a Bloody Mary.’