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Substitutes

Ben Hoffman

‘Did you notice our daughter is not our daughter anymore?’

Users Manual

Julián Herbert

‘If you require further specifications, please consult your local supplier. They will be happy to help.’

The Intoxicated Years

Mariana Enríquez

‘They cried as if they weren’t to blame for any of it. We hated innocent people.’

The Tattoo

Maciej Milkowski

‘We missed our moment, reading the classics in semi-virtual travel agencies.’

Blade Culture

Atticus Lish

‘As a kid, he played video games and roughhoused on the beach and joined a gang.’

The Landlady

Geling Yan

‘After all, they were landlady and tenant; what right did he have to meddle?’

Robertus Heimric, Welcome Back

Upamanyu Chatterjee

‘He was the one survivor who remembered nothing.’

Portia’s Choice

Lorna Gibb

‘There were rules to the game. I could not lose my virginity and I had to be careful not to let a boy go further than I wanted to.’

The Instant of Passage

Mathias Énard

‘Praying for the unknown dead, for the vague remains of the existences of total strangers, was sadly abstract.’

Dark Air

Lincoln Michel

‘There must have been a dozen ways for us to be crushed or torn apart.’

Epithalamium

Greg Jackson

‘Hara had stumbled on a kind of play, as if they were sisters left alone by their parents for the first time to explore the different ways a day could be deconstructed.‘

This is New

Marc Bojanowski

‘None of this would have happened if I’d just taken a deep breath, suppressed my emotions and said to the young woman, “Leave. Now.”‘

The Buddhist

Alan Rossi

‘Loneliness is the extra, the part that’s unnecessary.’