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Asymmetry

Lisa Halliday

An excerpt from Lisa Halliday's Asymmetry

Bachelor Life

M.J. Fitzgerald

‘At nine o’clock the man leaves the flat dressed in an elegant salmon-pink dress’.

Bastard Alias the Romantic

Yuri Herrera

‘Can you imagine what it would be like if instead of killing we cuddled?’

Beethoven Was One Sixteenth Black

Nadine Gordimer

‘Once there were blacks wanting to be white. Now there are whites wanting to be black.’

Bitter Tennis

Lucy Ives

‘I don’t know much about the cosmos, but I know enough to avoid the game of tennis.’

Blessed Assurance

Allan Gurganus

‘I sold funeral insurance to North Carolina black people.’

Boathouse

Jon Fosse

‘It was this summer that the restlessness came over me.’ Translated from the Norwegian by May-Brit Akerholt.

Broken Star

Jennifer Haigh

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

Buckets of Blood

Tessa Hadley

‘I’m miscarrying a pregnancy, she said, when the spasm seemed to have passed.—It’s a fine mess.’

Butt and Bhatti

Mohammad Hanif

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

Bye-Bye Natalia

Michel Faber

‘Natalia picks at the frayed black lace of her dress while the photograph of her American penpal loads into the computer.’

Candidate

Jessie Greengrass

‘All through winter and another summer we wait, but time passes more quickly now that we have a purpose. I feel it flowing.’

Challenger Deep

Ashley Hutson

‘The message was cheerful, positive. I did not express weakness on my son’s behalf: this is a mother’s first rule.’

City of the Dead, City of the Living

Nadine Gordimer

‘While I'm ironing, he cleans the gun. I saw he needed another rag and I gave it to him.‘