Esther Freud

‘When the Lindens arrived in Los Angeles it was raining. Not drizzling, or even pouring, but streaming down outside the glass doors of the arrivals lounge in thick, grey sideways slices.’

Lawrence Norfolk

‘After a turn they came to a high arched entrance from which cooking smells drifted.’

Ross Raisin

‘A few drivers had slowed to look up at the side of the coach as it circled the roundabout.’

Issue 119

Mario Vargas Llosa

‘He stood, rubbing his arms. How long had he slept? Not knowing the time was one of the torments of Pentonville.’

Issue 119

Tania James

‘Gama has defeated them all, and more, but how is he to be Champion of the World if this half of the world is in hiding?’

Cynan Jones

‘In the car lights he could see just beyond the runs the bodies of cars like some disassembled ghost train littering the field.’

Issue 119

Mark Haddon

Andrés Neuman

‘Like him, the bathroom mirror had lost brightness over the years.’

Etgar Keret

‘I want to I want to I want to I want to I want to I want to I want to.’

Hiromi Kawakami

‘If the god of uranium really exists, then what must he be thinking? Were this a fairy tale of old, what would happen when humans broke the laws of nature to turn gods into minions?’ Hiromi Kawakami on the nature gods of Japan.

Gyrdir Eliasson

‘We sat on the little stools under the window and watched Grandma in her dress with the red roses on it, against the backdrop of the blue-painted kitchen.’

Chinelo Okparanta

‘The year Mama fell sick was the year Njideka confessed to me that she was a runs girl.’

Maile Chapman

‘That was my first introduction to the way that the elderly are obliged to live: the dependence, the danger and the enormous expense when something does happen.’

Justin Mundhenk

‘She felt like she was stepping on someone’s knuckles. With each careful step, she heard the sound of breaking bones.’