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The Transition

Luke Kennard

In the not-so-distant future, middle-class underachievers are faced with a difficult choice: prison or motivational business classes.

Body Language

Juhea Kim

‘Always being pulled in opposite directions was how she remained upright.’

In the Garden

F.T. Kola

‘I too quiver. I resonate with the music that vibrates within her.’

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.

Swimming Underwater

Merethe Lindstrøm

‘When I picture my childhood, it’s like I’m swimming underwater.’ Merethe Lindstrøm’s story is translated from the Norwegian by Marta Eidsvåg, and is the winner of Harvill Secker’s Young Translators’ Prize 2016.

The Tenant

Victor Lodato

‘She’d gotten so used to her loneliness, she didn’t want to fall from it now.’

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.’

The Weak Spot

Sophie Mackintosh

‘There was a certain kind of teenage girl who would relish not just the killing, but the trophy taking, choosing a tooth and using the pliers herself.’

The Neighborhood

Kelly Magee

‘Can bad mothers be taught to be good? Or maybe, can we be incentivized to bond? To love?’

The Pigeon

Faraaz Mahomed

‘The pigeon and I have a very warm and comfortable relationship.’ 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize – regional winner for Africa.

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.’

Pure Gold

John Patrick McHugh

‘That icy fear of the morning after slithered back: why does summer always feel like it belongs to someone else?’

Navigation

Lisa McInerney

‘His aberrations are formless; he imagines his insanity as a sort of gaseous molecule, looking to react with bugs and glitches.’