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My Mother Pattu
Saraswathy M. Manickam
Saraswathy M. Manickam’s ‘My Mother Pattu’ is the Asian regional winner of the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
A Season on Earth
Gerald Murnane
‘He had forgotten in the seminary how many distractions there were in the world.’
The Sole Purveyor of Madame Bovary in Beijing circa 1989
Amanda Lee Koe
‘In the day, his bevy of besotted rustics were coached in maxims of libertarian socialism. By night: rice wine orgies and folk punk sing-alongs.’
Rules for Visiting
Jessica Francis Kane
‘It wasn’t until the end of dinner, when my aunt started clearing and my grandmother demanded another bottle of wine, that I began to understand.’
American Girl and Boy from Shobrakheit
Noor Naga
‘Question: is romance just a father who never carried you to bed carrying you, at last, to bed?’
Evensong
Todd McEwen
‘Characteristically my wife refused to be drawn into the situation while I became obsessed with it.’
Agnes of Iowa
Lorrie Moore
‘Through college she had been a feminist – more or less. She shaved her legs, but just not often enough, she liked to say.’
Always the Same Snow and Always the Same Uncle
Herta Müller
‘Who knows: what I write I must eat, what I don’t write – eats me.’
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.’
Vintage 1954
Antoine Laurain
An extract from Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain, translated from the French by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken.
At the Edge of Night
Friedo Lampe
An excerpt from Friedo Lampe’s At the Edge of Night, translated from the German by Simon Beattie.