Issue 106

Ha Jin

‘Meifen had never imagined that his life could be so fragile.’

Adam Foulds

‘His life, unexciting as it may have been so far, was still a detailed, complicated thing.’

Issue 64

Charlotte Hobson

‘Petya Pravda's dead. He died forty days ago, as elongated and translucent as an icon.’

Pablo Gutiérrez

‘There’s no finding a telephone booth with anything more than an amputated cable hanging like a terrible extremity.’

Anushka Jasraj

‘We have been married five years – too soon for us to take pleasure in each other’s absence.’

Issue 99

Nell Freudenberger

‘Everything was okay until Marisol accidentally broke a china cup with a rose on it that her stepmother had brought with her from DR.’

Issue 4

Nicole Ward Jouve

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

Issue 119

Mark Haddon

Issue 103

Jennifer Haigh

‘I’d never heard her say an unkind word about anybody.’

Issue 31

Richard Ford

‘No one, I think, thought Great Falls would burn.’

Issue 82

Nell Freudenberger

‘He hated the idea of learning words from a list; it was like taking vitamin supplements in place of eating.’

Issue 123

Xiaolu Guo

‘His father had sent him into exile.’

Issue 16

Mary Gordon

‘We live knowing not only that we will die, that we may suffer, but that all that we hold dear will finish; that there will be no more familiar.’

Issue 112

Mohammad Hanif

‘Teddy is one of those people who are only articulate when they talk about cricket.’