« The hope of future Pan-African socialism »
Jackie ThomaeA group of « skinny Black lads » enroll at Leipzig’s Karl Marx University in East Germany. An excerpt from Jackie Thomae’s novel Brothers.
Hitchhiker
Defne SumanA story about danger. « She wondered when he was going to ask her where she was going. »
The original Dybbuk
Menachem KaiserA story about afterlife. « A saint! What do you mean he’s a saint! the scholar says. He’s a librarian! Are librarians saints? »
Trouble at work and home while my son is abroad
Francesco PacificoA story about living. « I have a family and I have a job and I have a teaching gig, and these things have me. »
Streuselkuchen
Marc LunghussA story about coolness. « The phone rings. It is Jim Jarmusch, and he asks if I want to come over to his place. »
Perhentian Sunrise
Preeta SamarasanA story about romance. « The eve of a suitor’s arrival, bigger than Christmas or birthday, I tell you. »
A Silence Shared
Lalla Romano« If a story just like that one — dying babies, divine retribution — had come back to me from childhood memories, it would have seemed fantastical, unreal. »
The Ogre, the Monk and the Maiden
Margaret DrabbleA story about quarks and antiquarks, beauty quarks and strangelets, gluons, muons, prions, hadrons and charms.
An Unlucky Man
Megan McDowell« He rolled down the window, went back to honking the horn, and started waving my underpants out the window. »
A Madman’s Tale
Enric Valor« I guess it all began, » he said, « because of that weak-headedness my father sometimes had. It just rubbed me the wrong way. »
A rather disproportionate intervention
Ijoma MangoldAn excerpt from Ijoma Mangold’s memoir, Das Deutsche Krokodil (The German Crocodile), available in English translation from the DAS Editions imprint of Digitalback Books
By misadventure
David MitchellA short story about vertigo from the author of Utopia Avenue, Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green. « Possibly a dare, or a rite of passage, hung in the air. Remember their age: most late teenagers are immortal. »
Stupid illnesses called « childhood »
Marina JarreAn excerpt from I padri lontani / Distant Fathers (1987), the rediscovered memoir of Marina Jarre, available in English translation from New Vessel Press.
The final frontier
Ali SmithNew short fiction from the author of Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer. A story about what’s ours and what’s not ours.