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Gifted

Segun Afolabi

‘The boys' eyes grazed the carpet and then each other guiltily. The youngest tried not to smile with shame.’

Beethoven Was One Sixteenth Black

Nadine Gordimer

‘Once there were blacks wanting to be white. Now there are whites wanting to be black.’

The Witch’s Dog

Helon Habila

‘The old witch, Nana Mudo, lived alone with her dog on the other side of the grove.’

The Visiting Child

Karen E. Bender

‘Jane needed a stranger in the kitchen, someone to speak because she could not.’

The Great Wall

Ismail Kadare

‘What China loses by the sword it retakes by silk.’

A short story by Ismail Kadare, translated by David Bellos.

White Sands

Geoff Dyer

‘Now that we were out of danger it seemed possible that there had never been any danger.’

The Ship at Anchor

Frederic Tuten

‘Those words made me wonder why I ever wanted to be an artist, why I ever wanted to live, though I never thought I wanted to die.’

The Falcon

Gilad Evron

‘He once called Gihon a limb of his own body.’

Buckets of Blood

Tessa Hadley

‘I’m miscarrying a pregnancy, she said, when the spasm seemed to have passed.—It’s a fine mess.’

The Grief of Strangers

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

‘Chinechelum said little as her mother drove her to the airport.’

Never Neverland

Rodrigo Fresán

‘The dead are—always—masterpieces of literature.’

Lily

Ian McEwan

‘He'll be ruthless with himself in his pursuit of boundless health to avoid his mother's fate: Mental death.’

Northanger Abbey

Martin Amis

Jane Austen’s novel ‘Northanger Abbey’ was published posthumously in 1818. Martin Amis adapted it for Miramax Pictures in 2001. The film has yet to be made. This is how it begins.

Early One Morning

Helen Simpson

‘He's the only person in the world who listens to me and does what I tell him (thought Zoe).’