“How am I supposed to be nice when nobody’s nice to me?”

Firstclaw’s love spells were rumored to be unusually effective.

Khidr stepped out onto the street and was filled with an extraordinary horror.

But it’s not surprising—with everything you hear on the news, how can anyone be expected to think well of the Chinese?

“Look, this forklift even has an electric motor.”

The wooden ring looked antique, because, as Mr. Gimbal explained, it was a centuries-old stereoscopic theater.

“The Devil at your service!” it announced in perfect Italian.

Although I wasn't really worried. I mean not really worried about him; you know what I mean?

It’s an act of virtue to kill her!

Cats. Carry cats!

Set me free and I'll make you rich.

A mother sheep tries to protect her lambs from a devious wolf in this Qatari folktale, translated by Rana Elmaghraby.

She’s the one who identified the body with your name, address, and document number.

A general who has dreams, that much they’d put up with, but a general who sees ghosts?

Coconut trees, palm fronds gone. Decapitated.

I follow him everywhere and never lose sight of him; he rarely notices me.

We belt out everything from ABBA to K-pop, to “Ang Pasko ay Sumapit,” grinding and wiggling.

His dead friend had asked him to talk to Janice but hadn’t explained why.

Actually, the night Erlina first saw an Onglo was the night the creature was regenerating his power.

I want to cry and look for Papa, but I can’t go out.

“There is hope. There is joy. Come on, George, let’s grab a slice of some of that fun and happiness for ourselves!”

Why, oh why, did you not come back immediately?

Men can be angels when joy is in the air.

She struggled and fought back and tried to save herself but could not overcome the great crocodile that had taken hold of her.

Deeku refused to understand the close bond between the humans and the deer and their dependence on each other.

After I fell for him, I never cheated on him again, except that time in Paris. And that other time.

What if my rage has filled my core and transformed it?

What happened next, I will never quite understand.

Kenneth felt his seat belt clamp across his chest and his stomach somersaulting as the car careened off the road.

Her face is like a page in a diary that has never been written.

I always measured distances in songs. I measured everything in songs.

For weeks she had behaved as though she were the only person to have ever had a nervous breakdown.

I have become Japanese and I am no longer a Welshwoman.

It happened so quickly. The End.

Yes, there was a shadow there.

Dan believed it had all started going wrong when they took away his keys.

Food banks are one of the country’s main industries now; having replaced actual banks, who fled the island like rats from a sinking ship.

I heard that their overflowing hormones made them dangerously seductive.

Caught off guard, we were laughably weak.

It's not very clear to me if he was asking for help or wanting me to leave them alone.

Perhaps I’m not ready yet to plan out my entire future, but right now these are the arms I need around me.

Oh, Master Song, who would have guessed your heart was hard as steel?

This night sealed, consecrated, my future as a writer absolutely.

I had two choices: I could wrest back control of my life or I could die.

I guzzle the wine and ask him if he likes women now.

These kids could be just clever, fancy thugs.

He still loves her, so he complies. He runs the simulation all over again.

They’ve taken care of the medical expenses ever since “posthumous” became synonymous with “posthuman.”

Inside it floated a tiny infant, in every way like a human being, except for its minuscule, as yet featherless, wings.

I huddled in sorrow beside the warmth of my wound.

In this excerpt from 2019 Man Booker International winner Jokha Alharthi's novel Bitter Orange Tree, an Omani student dredges up her grandmother’s troubled past and grows entangled in the personal dilemmas of her fellow international students.

Nothing can force me to go on living beneath Hermaphroditus’s long shadow—one half wearing the other, half a woman leaning on half a man.

We were five minutes out on our jeep when the sound of an explosion big enough to shake the car resounded from behind us.

Days before my dad set the house on fire, there was a sheet drying bit by bit.

I would have ironed my own hands had I not needed them to iron.

It was impossible to talk to a dead man, so I talked to her instead.

The hearth is a fire that’s always being extinguished.

When did you agree to live like a widow before your time?

Nobody couldn’t have a belly button.

I knew better than anyone else that Oh was not gay, that he was just using these rumors.