Short Stories

What if the most intimate relationships in our lives were also where power, violence, and oppression began? Ingeborg Bachmann’s Complete Stories brings together the short fiction of one of the most important German-language writers of the twentieth century. Across stories set in Vienna, Rome, Paris, and beyond, Bachmann portrays women and men caught in relationships shaped by obsession, shame, silence, and unequal power. Lovers struggle to communicate, women confront the invisible restrictions imposed by patriarchal society, and ordinary lives reveal the lingering wounds of European fascism. With lyrical precision and psychological intensity, Bachmann explores the limits of language and the difficulty of telling the truth about ourselves and others. Both intimate and political, these stories reveal how history’s deepest structures of domination can persist in private life, long after the events that created them have passed.

In Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah, Croatian-Bosnian writer Miljenko Jergović draws on the rich oral traditions, folk songs, and legends of Bosnia to create a collection of nineteen stories in which ordinary lives take on the dimensions of myth. Inspired by the music that filled the streets, cafés, and homes of Sarajevo during the author’s childhood, the stories imagine the extraordinary events and forgotten histories that might lie behind traditional songs. Jergović’s characters inhabit a world where miracles seem possible, fate shapes human destinies, and misfortune can transform individuals into enduring legends. Christians and Muslims share a landscape marked by centuries of cultural exchange, imperial domination, and conflict. Their stories are sometimes comic, sometimes brutal, but always deeply connected to the collective memory of the region. Moving between folklore, historical imagination, and intimate portraits of human experience, Jergović explores how communities preserve their identities through storytelling. The collection offers a vivid literary portrait of the Balkans, revealing how individual lives become part of a larger cultural inheritance that survives across generations.

Set in Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, during Russia’s full-scale invasion, Arabesques is a collection of interconnected stories about ordinary people trying to preserve their humanity in extraordinary circumstances. Through intimate snapshots of daily life, Serhiy Zhadan portrays a city transformed by war, where familiar routines have been disrupted by bombardment, loss, and the constant threat of death. The characters navigate weddings, love affairs, funerals, and reunions with loved ones returning from the front. Volunteers deliver humanitarian aid, families struggle to protect elderly relatives, and wounded soldiers attempt to rebuild their lives. Their experiences reveal the fragile connections that sustain communities even as violence reshapes the world around them. Returning to characters and settings from his earlier works, including Mesopotamia and The Orphanage, Zhadan captures both the vulnerability and quiet resilience of Ukrainian society. With understated compassion, he explores grief, solidarity, memory, and the persistence of everyday life amid destruction. Arabesques is a powerful literary portrait of a community determined to endure.

An ordinary object can hold an extraordinary past. In this award-winning collection of interconnected stories, Mai Al-Nakib illuminates the private lives of people across the Middle East, where personal memories intertwine with war, political upheaval, and shifting cultural identities. A young girl bears the name Amerika in a country growing increasingly hostile toward the West; a Palestinian teenager is drawn into a disastrous act of violence; and a Kuwaiti woman returns to her family after years of captivity in Iraq. Beneath the headlines, Al-Nakib finds the intimate moments that define us: love, betrayal, forgiveness, and the fragile hope of beginning again.

Spanning generations of women and moving between Denmark and Russia, Natalja’s Stories is an inventive, surrealist exploration of family history, migration, and the elusive nature of identity. The story begins with Marie, a young woman living in Copenhagen who leaves her home with a Russian admirer and travels to St. Petersburg. As political upheaval engulfs Russia following the Revolution, Marie dies, and her daughter, Natalja, undertakes the journey back to Denmark carrying her mother’s ashes. But Natalja’s story refuses to unfold as a conventional tale of exile and loss. Retold through the memories and imaginations of successive generations, it becomes a shifting narrative filled with mysterious encounters, murders, absurd characters, and unexpected connections. A particularly unsettling figure, Viktor Blanke, appears across the lives of three generations of mothers and daughters, blurring the boundaries between past and present, memory and invention. As the stories accumulate, identities overlap and family history becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from fiction. Originally published in Danish in 1988 as Nataljas fortællinger, this playful, formally experimental novella challenges familiar narratives about migration and belonging. Christensen combines dark humour, surrealism, and philosophical reflection to suggest that identity is never fixed: we continually reinvent ourselves through the stories we tell about our lives.

A Beautiful Lack of Consequence is a collection of thirty short stories that explore the complexities of contemporary womanhood through a blend of realism, surrealism, dark humor, and feminist commentary. Across its stories, Monika Radojevic depicts women confronting the pressures and expectations imposed on them by society. A woman enters a bar and finds herself completely invisible; a newly married couple faces a disturbing punishment for their childlessness; and a young girl trades her vocal cords for the possibility of freedom. These strange and unsettling scenarios transform familiar experiences of exclusion, fear, and powerlessness into imaginative explorations of resistance. Moving between the everyday and the fantastical, the collection examines how women navigate relationships, social conventions, anger, and the struggle to make their voices heard. Radojevic combines tenderness with biting humor, capturing both the vulnerability and the strength of women pushed to their limits. Her stories ask what happens when those who have been expected to remain silent finally refuse to comply. Dark, inventive, and sharply observed, the collection explores the possibilities of reclaiming agency in a world that continually attempts to define women’s lives.

Exit Zero is a collection of twelve surreal and imaginative short stories that explore the strange, often unsettling experiences of ordinary people. Blending magical realism, dark humour, and reflections on mortality, Marie-Helene Bertino creates worlds where the boundaries between everyday life and the extraordinary begin to dissolve. In the title story, Jo returns to her estranged father’s home after his death and discovers that she has inherited an unexpected companion: a unicorn living in the backyard. Elsewhere, former lovers fall mysteriously from the sky, gardens become sites of communication between the living and the dead, and familiar objects take on uncanny significance. Beneath the collection’s fantastical premises lies a thoughtful exploration of loneliness, family relationships, grief, and the difficulty of navigating an unpredictable world. Bertino’s stories invite readers to look beyond the apparent absurdity of everyday existence and consider the connections, losses, and moments of wonder that give life meaning.

Arabilious: Anthology of Arab Futurism brings together nine science-fiction stories imagining alternative futures shaped by the cultures, histories, and social realities of the Arab world. Featuring writers from Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, the collection challenges the dominance of Western perspectives in speculative fiction and presents visions of the future rooted in Arab experiences. The stories explore the consequences of emerging technologies, environmental crises, political conflict, and social inequality. Rather than imagining progress as a simple escape from the past, the contributors examine how traditions, collective identities, and historical memories continue to shape societies undergoing rapid change. The anthology includes Fadi Zaghmout’s A Jaha in the Metaverse, which reimagines the traditional Jordanian marriage-custom ceremony within a virtual world, using satire to question the persistence of patriarchal practices in an increasingly technological society. Together, these stories expand the possibilities of Arab science fiction, offering imaginative alternatives to the present while questioning who gets to envision the future. The collection combines speculative experimentation with cultural specificity, social criticism, and reflections on the legacy of colonialism.

Set primarily in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, A Broken People’s Playlist is a collection of twelve interconnected short stories about love, loss, family, betrayal, and the possibility of redemption. Each story takes its title from a song, using music as an emotional thread that connects the characters and their experiences. Together, the stories form a portrait of a city and its people, revealing the beauty and brokenness of everyday life. The collection introduces a diverse cast of characters navigating personal crises and complicated relationships. A teenage boy dreams of becoming a DJ while his family falls apart, only to reappear years later as a troubled middle-aged man. Elsewhere, a dying man attempts to organise his own funeral while he is still alive, and a husband struggles to cope with the aftermath of his wife’s miscarriage. Other stories explore infidelity, friendship, grief, and the consequences of choices that cannot easily be undone. Through its music-inspired structure and interconnected narratives, the collection explores how people endure heartbreak, make mistakes, and search for meaning amid life’s disappointments. It is ultimately a reflection on human imperfection and the possibility of finding connection and hope even when life feels irreparably broken.

Across generations of Black Muslim life in America, ten interconnected worlds of faith, family, and belonging unfold. A daughter haunted by her father’s ghost struggles to reconcile his legacy with the truth; a mother caring for her disabled son revisits a life-altering experience; and a federal agent spying on a prominent member of the Nation of Islam confronts the contradictions of his own life. Set against the complex social and spiritual landscape of Black Muslim communities, these stories explore the tension between religious conviction and human imperfection, tradition and independence, and the desire to belong and the need to question. With compassion, subtle humour, and remarkable insight, Temple Folk offers an intimate portrait of people navigating the distance between who they believe they should be and who they really are.

Nine Yard Sarees is a collection of eleven interconnected stories following nine women across three generations of the Srinivasan family, a Tamil Brahmin family whose history stretches from India to Singapore, Australia, and the United States. Spanning nearly seven decades, from 1950 to 2019, the stories explore how migration, tradition, and changing social expectations shape women’s lives. At the heart of the collection are women negotiating the demands of family and community while trying to define themselves on their own terms. Raji, the family matriarch, struggles with life away from her homeland, while her daughter Padma attempts to raise her children according to traditional values. In the younger generation, Keerthana approaches marriage and the prospect of wearing the nine-yard saree, a garment symbolizing womanhood and cultural heritage. Through stories of love, grief, prejudice, and personal transformation, Ram examines the tensions between tradition and independence. She addresses patriarchy, caste discrimination, sexuality, and the complexities of belonging in the diaspora. Moving between generations and continents, the collection celebrates women’s resilience and solidarity while revealing the emotional costs of preserving cultural identity in a changing world. The book won the 2024 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction.

The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin's tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back inside: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child's first encounter with darkness or the fallibility of parents. In each story, twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin, revealing surreal truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others. This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant modern writers.