So the seamstress is out, and Mom must save the situation somehow, except here's the thing: there's no money.

Mother loved pears that were within an inch of decaying, so that your fingers left indents and, when you bit into them, thick honeyed juice flowed out, summoning every wasp for miles around.

The barmaid poured him vodka, and Sergei Ilyich took it up with an accustomed, firm grip that was even elegant in its way.

Her knees were trembling a bit, and she thought: That's the shock.

One morning when she and her mother were making the bed--she was on one side, her mother on the other--Cecilia showed the first sign of madness.

My name is Akiko. What glorious name do you bear? Type it and press enter and Akiko will unlock her door.

Good God, what criminals? They're ordinary people.

He just loved that little gizmo.

Something suggested to Nina Alexandrovna that in this halted time there was no important difference between order and disorder.

The tracheotomy left him hoarse for a long time but in the end he got his normal voice back.

We were going out stealing horses.

All female psychiatric computers are named Eliza, in accordance with a fine old tradition.

So now we've begun packing. I've carried empty cardboard boxes home from the supermarket.

But mostly it nested inside his chest, stirring in there like something alive.

I'm lying on my back in the ambulance, firmly strapped to the stretcher and we're driving very fast through town...

The moment Patrik Ohlsson unfolded the raffle ticket and saw the number for the first time, he noticed the intriguing ambiguity.

I’ve had a lot of time lately, and I’ve been thinking about the King and Queen.

You're not going to cause me any trouble now, are you, the conductor said.

A warden takes me by the arm as I slip on my blindfold and step out of the cell.

The departure came in the month of March, when the thaw opened up the passes, which in our mountains were like gateways toward the countries of central Europe.

That prisoner dreamed that he was in prison. Naturally, the dreams had details and patterns.

Nevertheless this howling struck terror to the heart, especially in that bitter weather.

It took me some long months to realize that I was incarcerated.

I am writing to you from the Ruukkijoki prison barracks because the guard gave me paper and told me to write my last letter ever, home or to a lover.

My angel . . . Were you ever a Communist?

There, where my body seemed to lay a great distance from me, I put my hand on my leg, on my fingers, and I couldn't tell they were mine.

Bare chests will be covered up, pretentious laughter gasps its last; late nights, idleness, sleeping late-gone!

When they reached Via Merulana: the crowd. Outside the entrance, the black of the crowd, with its wreath of bicycle wheels.

Sit down and listen. And write everything down.

Don't say a word to anyone. Come alone. Make sure that you're not being followed.

Feverish, tense, you try to calm your rapid breathing.

Knowing this-that the doctor appeared deep in his Sunday routine-the woman hesitated.

He forced himself to take shallow breaths, even though his instinct was to swallow huge heaving gulps to relieve the sense of suffocation he felt in the crowds and the alleyways.

“I’m very happy,” said Personov as he left the house for work. “I’m very happy,” he reminded himself as he performed the process in reverse that evening. “I’m…

Translator’s Note: Three great waves of political cataclysm surged over a city already accustomed to periodic inundation by the black waters of the river Neva: the October Revolution, the purges…

“Can Xue doesn’t trust reason.”—Ha Jin

“Akin Isola remains one of our most versatile Nigerian writers.”—Wole Soyinka

My hiccups won't stop.

“The most important Arab novelist today.”—Naguib Mahfouz

Why doesn't your mother come back to look for you, constantly asked the woman.

He hugged me, baptizing me with his sweat.

My dear boy, how capital to find you here!

Fridays I go to church. I do not go to pray.

One. Two. And three. During the first three years of school, we are required to cross our arms if we wish to rest them on our desktops when we aren't writing.

The death was expected. The only one to be taken by surprise was Ibrahim Nassar.

Today you must pray to God, for today a nuclear war will probably break out.

Energy and resourcefulness. These virtues have excited me lately, sending me into a pathological rapture, duping me into rashness and loss of self-respect

Through the window I saw him throw the bundle onto the fire and stand over it until it caught light.

Public square. Guard in love with Magnolia (secretly, even to himself).

Herzl Haliwa lets out a scream and jerks his head from the pillow in alarm.

Where does Mrs. Simona go at night? Where are her feet taking her?

When I grow old, in however many three-month intervals, I'll gain more and more disabilities, cognitive and otherwise.

Naturally, he didn't say a word to his troops about the stupidity of their superior officers.

A young man, an eternal invalid, loved a girl, but she was merely fond of him.

It would be madness to delude himself into believing that Maria and the boy were still alive.

More than the snow he had to tramp through during the day, it was the cold of the night that made that time hard for him.

Perhaps it is merely a clever joke, but it has become a story, everybody's story.

He discovered suddenly that Gaza had a sea—a big sea too.

Other rumors might have circulated widely in earlier periods, but without a doubt these new ones should have produced the greatest effect.