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’

John Barth

Issue 1

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.’

Issue 163

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.

Issue 9

Manlio Argueta

‘I have not failed you, José. I understand that you were saying goodbye when you opened your eye, and that, besides greeting me, you were expressing your pride in me, seeing me standing with my arm around the shoulders of your granddaughter.’

Sarah Bernstein

‘What needs explaining was that, and it was a funny thing, a very funny thing, I did not speak the language.’

An extract from Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein.

Cecil Browne

Winner of the 2022 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize for Canada and Europe.

Issue 59

Assia Djebar

‘I met Annie for the first time in 1995, in Algiers. A friend of my sister's, she came from Paris and stayed with me for one night.’

Anita Brookner

‘The bride and groom were there all the time, in the centre, as they should be. A good-looking couple. But lifeless, figures from stock.’

Jesse Ball

‘My friends, what I mean is, this life is shallow like a plate. It goes no further.’

Emma Cline

‘It was the afternoons that did it, three o’clock like a kind of death knell, the house seeming too still, too many hours of sunlight left in the day. How had Thora even started going to the chat rooms?’

Issue 122

André Aciman

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

Suzie Bovenzi

‘I miss his body, the blank shine of it. I miss the clean blue bib.’

A story by Suzie Bovenzi.

Lena Andersson

‘Anticipation made it difficult for Ester to swallow.’ Translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel.