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Longshore Drift

Julia Armfield

‘She has never been very keen on the thought of herself as other people see her.’

Scream Queen

Julia Armfield

‘She is well-behaved, as icons go, she toes the party line.’

Short fiction by the author of Our Wives Under the Sea.

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.’

Slip of a Fish

Amy Arnold

‘Charlie’s swimming. Six strokes then she turns to breathe, six more and all the way to the end of the length. She’s a swimmer, Charlie. She’s a bit of a fish, a slip of a fish.’

Shirley from a Small Place

Alexia Arthurs

‘The highs and lows of fame, have been far better and far worse than both mother and daughter could have hoped for. Shirley is only twenty-seven.’

Reconstruction | New Voices

Lana Asfour

‘There’s nothing like watching the summer sunset with a glass of jellab.’

The Secular World

Nadeem Aslam

‘There is no lack of talent in this country. All we lack is decent leaders.’ Pakistan’s secular world runs against fundamentalism in Nadeem Aslam’s latest novel, The Golden Legend.

Punnu’s Jihad

Nadeem Aslam

‘It is as though the metal itself is bleeding.’

Leila in the Wilderness

Nadeem Aslam

‘It was almost involuntary: it felt like falling, or like rising in a dream.’

Don’t Look at Me Like That

Diana Athill

‘When I was at school I used to think that everyone disliked me, and it wasn’t far from true.’

A Certain King

Jennifer Atkins

‘I didn’t think she was happy; I thought she was in love, but I didn’t know what that told me, if it told me anything.’

Fiction by Jennifer Atkins.

The Martians Claim Canada

Margaret Atwood

‘Mushrooms have long memories. Some of them are thousands of years old. However, they are not always very talkative.’

Isis in Darkness

Margaret Atwood

‘The lock splits. The iron gate swings open. She emerges, raises her arms towards the suddenly chilled moon. The world changes.’

Cold Enough for Snow

Jessica Au

‘I wondered how I could feel so at home in a place that was not mine.’

An excerpt from Jessica Au's novel Cold Enough for Snow.