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Our Private Estate

Dave Lordan

‘Dozens of votive candles held aloft by mourners in white suits in procession. So much white, as if death could be engulfed in it, as if death itself was not an all-engulfing whiteness.’

Cow and Company

Parashar Kulkarni

‘And now there were four of them stepping out to look for a cow.’ 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize overall winner.

Mayo Oh Mayo

Nuala O’Connor

‘Tonight there is a moon-rind, a nicotined fingernail, hanging low over the lake; above it, a Swarovski sparkler of a star.’

Black Milk

Tina Makereti

‘Despair sat on her shoulders where her wings should have been. Darkness consumed her, the quivering lip of a dying abalone, grease in the barrel of a gun.’ 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize – regional winner for the Pacific.

Through the Night

Siobhán Mannion

‘The person in the mirror watches her, slightly swollen, slightly blurred.’

Kiddio at the Wedding

Mary O’Donoghue

‘If he fell in I would jump straight after, I would plumb through water not cold so much as oily, and dark as a dirty wine bottle.’

Party, Party

Belinda McKeon

‘Arlo’s matinee sleekness was so difficult to bear’

Ladivine

Marie NDiaye

‘We were hoping for a communion, and that communion never came.’

The Way of the Apple Worm

Herta Müller

‘The mother of the needle is the place that bleeds.’

The Fruit of My Woman

Han Kang

‘It was late May when I first saw the bruises on my wife’s body.’