Fiction
“Freedom to Move”
“Is our boy full?” Ketevan asked. “Grandfather’s diet is very strict. No dessert, no bread. Meat to feed a bird. But our boy loves to eat. Let him enjoy himself.”
By Ayşegül Savaş
“Opening Theory”
Looking over at her, he starts to smile again—revising, she thinks, the presumption of failure.
By Sally Rooney
“The Drummer Boy on Independence Day”
An indispensable part of the ceremony, of course, was the Civil War veteran, and at the time I’m telling about we still had one—a Confederate, naturally.
By E. L. Doctorow
“Kaho”
He may have been patiently waiting, for the longest time, for me to show up in front of him, she thought. Like an enormous spider waiting for its prey in the dark.
By Haruki Murakami
“The Hadal Zone”
Arwen’s last thought before sleep is that he is in a twisting cyclonic fall down through the ocean trench to become a compressed speck of matter. It feels good.
By Annie Proulx
“Vincent’s Party”
Probably she’d get in trouble for this tomorrow, but she didn’t care; she was too full of agitated happiness. Anything could happen between now and tomorrow.
By Tessa Hadley
“The Buggy”
The next wave or the one after, the buggy was going to be on its side and the baby—if there was one—would be strapped in and helpless.
By Roddy Doyle
“Chicago on the Seine”
Occasionally, I had to send a body home. What I’d noticed was that death abroad was more common on package tours.
By Camille Bordas
“Beyond Imagining”
The friends talked about reviving ladies’ lunches in person. “At my place, please, if you don’t mind,” Farah said.
By Lore Segal
“Woman, Frog, and Devil”
His father believed that the blame for both national disasters and educational failures lay with a soft upbringing that encouraged girlishness.
By Olga Tokarczuk