‘She got skinny and became a clairvoyant. And she wasn't even a stigmatic.’
It began as a chafing, a patch of dry skin, in the palm of his left hand. He ignored it at first, though at odd moments he found himself absent-mindedly rubbing the chapped flesh.
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‘The issue was the first of its kind. Trust me, it said. I know what I am talking about. These young writers are the future of literature. Watch. History will prove me right.’ – Bill Buford, Granta editor (1979-95)
‘Cover your nose and mouth, the order came, swift and useless; if they’d had their turbans they would have wound them around their faces but there were only the balaclavas.’
Fiction by Kamila Shamsie from the 2013 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘She felt exhausted, emptied out; she thought of the day that had passed – it was astonishing to her, that a single set of hours could contain so many separate states of violent feeling.’
Fiction by Sarah Waters from the 2003 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘This is the one thing I know from the minute I lift the receiver and slip that voice inside my ear: it will happen.’
Fiction by A.L. Kennedy from the 1993 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘As it was, my grandfather began helping me to paint without my having to ask him.’
Fiction by Kazuo Ishiguro from the 1983 Best of Young British Novelists issue.
‘The catastrophe had not happened to all of us, we began to understand, but to each of us.’
‘Was there a story? Yes, there was always a story .Did you write this one down? I've written them all down’.
‘To the inexperienced, hurricane stories always sound like exaggerations.’
‘There was very little I could do in life except get dressed, smoke the correct cigarettes.’
An extract from Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery.
‘I used to be ashamed of it, though I’m not sure what exactly felt shameful.’
On training to be an opera singer.
‘Yell defiance until his chest hurt, at the hawks that circled and circled over the meadow.’
