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Poor Lucky Kolyvanova

Ludmila Ulitskaya

‘The red girls’ school stood opposite a grey boys’ school, built five years after it as if to proclaim the rational symmetry of the world.’

Wheels of Progress

Gemini Wahhaj

‘Now Bangladesh survives only on aid, on other people feeding its people.’

In Lana Turner’s Bedroom

Gaby Wood

‘It was because it was night-time and raining that I decided to drive up to Lana Turner's old house in Beverly Hills.’

After Ida

Elise Winn

‘The year I turned seventeen, the cicada chorus was deafening, as if they were impatient for the real beginning of summer and didn’t realize they were it.’

Future Shock

Kate Wheeler

‘Althea's neck strained. Her black, small eyes shifted swiftly, blinked, then fixed evilly on Ingrid.’

Skinned Alive

Edmund White

‘Once in a very great while he referred to me playfully as his ‘husband’, despite his revulsion against camp.’

Aquifer

Tim Winton

‘Through the open window I smelt dead lupin and for a long time forgot my age.’

Seltz

Carlos Yushimito

‘I thought I’d found the answer to many of life’s mysteries, but I had no words to share with the world.’

A Child’s Book of Death and Dying

Abraham Verghese

‘A fine morning mist had rolled down over Addis Ababa from the Entoto mountains, leaving a sheen on the lawn between the apartment buildings'.

Exotics

Callan Wink

‘He’d come to tell her that he was leaving. It seemed rather impossible now – the telling, not the leaving.’

Ways of Going Home

Alejandro Zambra

‘It was hard for me to understand how someone could live alone.’

Memorial

Tobias Wolff

‘B.D. carried certain objects.’

The Deadman’s Pedal

Alan Warner

‘Each man’s right hand was stained black with glossy wet muck.’

Escapes

Joy Williams

‘We went directly out of the theatre and into the streets, my mother weeping on the little usher's arm.’