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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.

An Unnecessary Man

Maha Harada

‘I’d lived for half a century, but I had no sense of what that meant; no particular reaction.’

The Bookmobile

Kotaro Isaka

‘He told me he had quit his job the day after the earthquake and came out here with nothing but a sleeping bag.’

VIO

Kanako Nishi

‘I had an odd feeling as I regarded Yō, who knew things about me that I hadn’t known.’

A Ghost in Brazil

Kikuko Tsumura

‘I was ever so keen to visit the Aran Islands, but unfortunately, I died before ever making it out of Japan.’

Larger Than the Night

Masatsugu Ono

‘The night was sealed off completely – or so it seemed.’

Girl Games

Makena Onjerika

‘There, behind glass panes separating you from the good children, from life itself, you are kept company by your dread.’

The Hole

Hiroko Oyamada

‘The hole felt as though it was exactly my size – a trap made just for me.’

Nocturne

Yūshō Takiguchi

Jesse Kirkwood’s translation of ‘Nocturne’ by Yūshō Takiguchi is the winner of the 2020 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize.

Selfish Little Thing

Olivia Rosenthall

‘I began to lie awake at night thinking about all the terrible things I’d ever done, listing them quietly in my head, each selfish little thing, my body numb with guilt.’

Sleeping Beauty

Laura Demers

‘It’s normal not to be offered anything to eat or drink when you are a princess.’

Slobber and Drool

Jess Arndt

‘My face, not the glass, was blurry. I had no idea what I really looked like besides lumpy, fuzzy, profuse.’

It Was a Dog

Amaryllis Gacioppo

‘She liked to eat until her thighs felt gelatinous and slick with sweat, and her stomach ballooned out, sore and firm as though she had drunk cement that had now set.’

Messrs. External & Bodily

Helen Marten

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