HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO Nussaibah Younis, whose debut social and political satire has been shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, having already gathered a truckload of rapturous reviews including The Irish Times, Guardian and The Times, which describes Fundamentally as Bridget Jones in Iraq. This novel, a tale of a heartbroken English academic who...
“READING’S A WASTE OF TIME,” the dental hygienist said, hands in blue rubber gloves, blue rubber gloves in my mouth. I had been reading when she came in and she asked me what? I think I said something like, “oh it’s a biography, but it’s actually not a very good one.” “Yeah,” she said, “I...
“WE’RE GOD’S BEAUTIFUL CREATURES,” the vampire said, something like joy leaking into its voice for the first time since it had crawled under this house four days ago. “We’re the pinnacle of his art. If you believe in that kind of thing, anyway. That’s why the night is our time. He hangs jewels in the...
I HEARD A KNOCK ON THE DOOR, and quickly put my notebook under the mattress. I thought that lunch was over and that one of the orderlies had come to call me to the second part of the therapeutic conversations. But no: when I opened the door, Martin Amis was standing there. “May I come...
OUTSIDE, IN THE CITY, life begins early, between four and five in the morning. That’s usually when she goes to sleep, and she doesn’t stir until well into late morning, more like around noon. She’s getting on now, in her eighth decade. She shouldn’t really be here anymore – her type isn’t meant to survive...
MONSTER-MAKING IS CONTAGIOUS. Centuries-old narratives about who does or doesn’t belong in a community or a nation and about who is monstrous because they threaten the imagined unity and distinctiveness of the whole have a habit of inspiring new monstrifying narratives. The Nazis explicitly studied, adapted, and expanded to a terrifying degree European formulations of...
I’M SITTING WITH MA as she prepares dinner. It’s one of her rules, of which there are more every year. “I don’t mind cooking for you, Jem, while you’re young,” she says. “But I’m not your servant and I’m not working while you watch TV or read comics. So it’s either homework, or come keep...
SOME WRITERS BELIEVE short stories are harder to write than novels. They may put this down to every word having to count in a short story, while in the novel the narrative is allowed to meander. Although this is true to an extent, it would be foolish to think the novel is the easy option,...
A MISSING-PERSON THRILLER, a study in grief, and a courtroom drama is the easiest way to pitch Imran Mahmood’s latest novel, but it is so much more. A profoundly devastating love story emerges as parents find themselves trapped in no-man’s-land. Harry and Zara’s 18-year-old daughter has been missing for six weeks, and the police aren’t...
THERE WAS ONE DAY where we took a drive in Lee’s van, piling all in the back. We were all the same knees and elbows, like one of us had six instead of only two apiece. We were close with each other then like that. Then we didn’t have anywhere to go so Lee just...
SOME DAYS, YOU WANT TO TELL ME everything that you remember. You remember when we met. Tavern on the Green, July 1967. You were waitressing to pay for books at Cooper Union. I had just graduated from Wharton and was taking my father’s clients to lunch. It was my era of “at least it’ll make...
YOU ARE SITTING on the living room floor, spooning strawberry yoghurt onto the carpet. On the carpet, an insect crawls. Your mum asks what you’re doing even though it’s obvious what you’re doing – you’re spooning strawberry yoghurt onto the carpet where an insect crawls. ‘What are you doing?’ your mum asks. Her question is...
