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North Winds Blow the Leaves From the Trees

Yu Miri

‘I liked her quiet regard, the way it gave me a sense of loneliness.’

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.

VIO

Kanako Nishi

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

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.’

Messrs. External & Bodily

Helen Marten

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

Pinky Agarwalia: Biography of a Child Saint in Ten Parts

Bhanu Kapil

‘Every person who travelled here is unsteady, I can feel that.’

Ogadinma

Ukamaka Olisakwe

‘She began to count; it was easier this way, counting, because she would not have to remember how she felt. She only had to remember how long she had counted.’

Alphonse

Marie-Hélène Lafon

‘He was long and white; his hands especially were long and white, and he sewed; he looked after the linen; he worked as a woman would; he lived in the house; he didn’t speak, he was rarely spoken to.’

Translated from the French by Stephanie Smee.

That Time of Year

Marie NDiaye

‘The fact was that outside of summertime they knew nothing about the place at all.’

Translated from the French by Jordan Stump.

People From My Neighbourhood

Hiromi Kawakami

‘First prize went to the dog school principal, who of course had submitted a cartoon dog.’ Translated from the Japanese by Ted Goossen.

The Perfect Companion

Joanna Kavenna

‘She was so understanding, so interesting, such an intellectual. She was also a wristwatch, but this hardly mattered.’

Golden Vulture

Jason Ockert

‘Last summer, the boy still believed in miracles. That’s why he disobeyed his father and crossed the bridge. He wondered, back then, if his mother might be over there.’