Explore Fiction
Sort by:
Sort by:
from Son of the Morning
Joyce Carol Oates
‘The livingness of the rifle and the bullet and the death spasm and his own bright quickening blood: never would he forget.’
Requa-I
Tillie Olsen
‘Night scratched at the window and seeped from the room corners. No other sound but rising river wind.’
A Clean Marriage
Sayaka Murata
‘Frequency of sex since marriage: zero.’ Sayaka Murata on a sexless marriage and the ‘Clean Breeder’ technique for pleasureless reproduction.
A Double-Income Family
Deepti Kapoor
When Mrs Mehra leaves Delhi she retires in one of ‘the vast new satellite townships on the eastern fringes of the metropolis’.
A Fan Letter
Stewart O’Nan
‘Before I begin I'd like to say that I'll try to remember everything as best I can, though sometimes I know it won't be right.’
A Hebrew Sibyl
Cynthia Ozick
‘And so began what I was to become. To all these things – the admonitions and the testimonies, the rites and the annunciations – I had easily acquiesced.’
A Killing
Katherine Faw Morris
COKE SMELLS COLD AND CHEMICAL LIKE THE INSIDE OF A REFRIGERATOR. It’s what back then smells like, now when she thinks of it.
A Mason’s Hand | New Voices
Ali Akbar Natiq
‘Haji sahib, these kids are beyond me. I can’t teach them any more. Please make some other arrangement.’
A Mother’s Dilemma
Victor Lodato
‘I can hear the girl scratching a pencil inside a notebook. I don’t like it. I’ve asked her not to write about me.’
A Queer Streak Part One: Anonymous Letters
Alice Munro
‘She would never know why she had done it. She was sleepless and strung-up and her better judgement had deserted her.’
A Queer Streak Part Two: Possession
Alice Munro
‘He thinks he remembers Violet coming for supper, as she sometimes did, bringing with her a pudding which she set outside in the snow, to keep it cool.’