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Late Arrival

Clemens Meyer

Two women working shifts in a train station make a connection in this short story translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire.

Lost Children Archive

Valeria Luiselli

An extract from Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, nominated for the Rathbones Folio Prize.

Messrs. External & Bodily

Helen Marten

‘Space is marked and people do their best, but somewhere somebody made a false prophecy for the land.’

Nightingale

Marina Kemp

‘She knew it was a trick of the lonely to favour the rude to the simply unmoved; that the loneliest thing in these villages and in this most tucked-away of professions was to elicit no response at all.’

Marina Kemp’s debut novel Nightingale is shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.

North Winds Blow the Leaves From the Trees

Yu Miri

‘I liked her quiet regard, the way it gave me a sense of loneliness.’

Ogadinma

Ukamaka Olisakwe

‘She began to count; it was easier this way, counting, because she would not have to remember how she felt. She only had to remember how long she had counted.’

People From My Neighbourhood

Hiromi Kawakami

‘First prize went to the dog school principal, who of course had submitted a cartoon dog.’ Translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen.

Pew

Catherine Lacey

‘The church has no thoughts. The church is brick and glass. If they ever slept there, they would see that.’

Pinky Agarwalia: Biography of a Child Saint in Ten Parts

Bhanu Kapil

‘Every person who travelled here is unsteady, I can feel that.’

Shame

Mieko Kawakami

‘During sex, Narumi would picture herself as steamed rice being turned into mochi rice cakes.’

That Time of Year

Marie NDiaye

‘The fact was that outside of summertime they knew nothing about the place at all.’

Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.

The Art of Waving

Andrea E. Macleod

‘I was only nine when I took to practicing the art of not waving. I felt an exhilarating power surge inside me and I ran all the way home, punching the air as I went.’

The Fearful Summer

Adam Nicolson

‘I saw the bodies. They were blotched under the skin where the blood had clotted & pooled. I have never seen the dead so dead.’

The Great Homecoming

Anna Kim

Read an excerpt from The Great Homecoming by Anna Kim, a novel of love and loss in the wake of the Korean war.