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There was once a woman who
Inger ChristensenA surprisingly rhyming excerpt from Inger Christensen’s novella « Natalja’s Stories ».
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Let’s enjoy the moon
Alba de CéspedesEight young women live in a college run by nuns in Rome; an excerpt from Alba de Céspedes’ There’s No Turning Back (Nessuno Torna Indietro).
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The body in the crushed roses
Sergei LebedevExcerpt from Sergei Lebedev’s new novel The Lady of the Mine (2025), set near a Ukrainian coal mine that buries atrocities from the past.
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Animal game
Agnes LidbeckA story about family. « ‘A woman of few words,’ he smiled. ‘How refreshing.’ »
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« 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.
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Hitchhiker
Defne SumanA story about danger. « She wondered when he was going to ask her where she was going. »
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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? »
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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. »
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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. »
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Perhentian Sunrise
Preeta SamarasanA story about romance. « The eve of a suitor’s arrival, bigger than Christmas or birthday, I tell you. »
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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. »
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The Ogre, the Monk and the Maiden
Margaret DrabbleA story about quarks and antiquarks, beauty quarks and strangelets, gluons, muons, prions, hadrons and charms.
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An Unlucky Man
Megan McDowell« He rolled down the window, went back to honking the horn, and started waving my underpants out the window. »
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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. »
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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
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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. »
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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.
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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.