Have you ever……ached for something you couldn’t name?…imagined a different life and wondered ‘what if’?…dreamed of a place you’ve never been, but knew would be home?…yearned for a truth, a way of being?Fourteen authors from six countries, spanning five continents, take the reader into their experience of hiraeth, the longing for something more, lost, imagined, or just out of reach. Homelands left behind, childhoods relived, journeys not taken, long-l...

Sawubona, a Zulu greeting, 'I see you and welcome your presence.' A beautiful sentiment, the embodiment of paying attention, 'I notice you. I am with you. You are not invisible.' Inside this book are stories by writers who have done exactly that.They have opened their eyes and hearts to people, places, objects, joys, griefs and small acts of survival. Embraced what is broken, funny, tender, nearly invisible.No heroes in capes. No grand speeches. Just human beings on a share...

Sawubona, a Zulu greeting, ‘I see you and welcome your presence.' A beautiful sentiment, the embodiment of paying attention, ‘I notice you. I am with you. You are not invisible.’ Inside this book are stories by writers who have done exactly that.They have opened their eyes and hearts to people, places, objects, joys, griefs and small acts of survival. Embraced what is broken, funny, tender, nearly invisible.No heroes in capes. No grand speeches. Just human beings on a share...

An unforgettable, unnerving short story about a writer’s life from one of today’s greatest writers – extracted from her upcoming collection, THE ASSASSINATION OF MARGARET THATCHER.“One summer at the fag-end of the nineties, I had to go out of London to talk to a literary society, of the sort that must have been old-fashioned when the previous century closed. When the day came, I wondered why I’d agreed to it; but yes is easier than no, and of course when you make a promise you thin...

Henry Nash has hauled his way from a working class childhood in Bradford, through an undergraduate degree at Oxford, and into adulthood and an academic elite. But still, he can't escape his anger. As the world - and men in particular - continue to disappoint him, so does his rage grow in momentum until it becomes almost rapturous. And lethal. A savagely funny novel that disdains literary and moral conventions, All My Precious Madness is also a work of deep empathy even when that also means...

Dropout Neville Lister accompanies acclaimed photographer Saul Auerbach for a day, to learn a lesson for life. They play a game: from a hill above Johannesburg they pick three houses and decide to knock on their doors in search of a story. Auerbach's images of the first two will become classic portraits, but soon the light fades. Lister only reaches the third house decades later, returning to post-apartheid South Africa and a Johannesburg altered almost beyond recognition. How to live when...

Inspired by Giles Gordon and David Hughes's Best Short Stories series, which ran to ten volumes between 1986 and 1995, Best British Short Stories this year reaches its thirteenth volume.Best British Short Stories 2023 showcases an excellent and varied selection of stories, by British writers, first published during 2022 in magazines, journals, anthologies, collections, chapbooks and online.This new anthology contains stories by Alinah Azadeh, Davi...

Imtiaz Dharker was born in Pakistan, grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books. Over the Moon is her fifth book from Bloodaxe. These are poe...

What kind of Detective am I? Eardrum or tympanum? Gullet or oesophagus? Pussy or pudenda? A Detective needs a language almost as much as a language needs a Detective. In this new collection of stories, award-winning author Ivan Vladislavic invites readers to do some detective work of their own. Each story can be read as just that - a story - or you can dig a little deeper. Take a closer look, examine the artefact from all angles, and consider the clues and patterns concealed within. Whethe...

Hugo Williams is rightly cherished for his inimitable fusion of autobiography and irony, and a technical glide that allows his writing to 'slip back to the past as effortlessly as a dreamer' ( The Times).I Knew the Bride is Williams' eleventh collection of poems, and his first since West End Final was shortlisted for both the T. S. Eliot and Forward prizes for poetry in 2009. This new volume bears - and lays bare - those qualities that have become so char...

This collected edition commemorates the 10th anniversary of Julia Darling's death, and includes a substantial selection of unpublished work. Jackie Kay writes: "The poems are funny, irreverent, moving and never sentimental. You can recognise yourself in them, recognise your family. They are warm, full of compassion; [...] a shining bright light."

Love in a Life, Andrew Motion's sixth volume of poetry, marks a conspicuous development in the work of the founder of the modern Narrative School. Directness and a new colloquialism are wedded to Motion's distinctive obliquities in a volume where the idea of marriage governs the architecture of each poem and the book as a whole. The stories of two marriages gradually emerge, like chapters in a narrative, and are themselves bound to more public material, so that each lends ...