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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

** LONGLISTED for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize 2018 **M. John Harrison is a cartographer of the liminal. His work sits at the boundaries between genres – horror and science fiction, fantasy and travel writing – just as his characters occupy the no man’s land between the spatial and the spiritual. Here, in his first collection of short fiction for over 15 years, we see the master of the New Wave present unsettling visions of contemporary urban Britain, as well as supernatural par...

In this warm and witty celebration of the written word, the popular comedian and presenter takes the reader on a journey across Britain as he explores his lifelong love of books and bookshops. Why play to 12,000 people when you can play to 12? In Autumn 2021, Robin Ince's stadium tour with Professor Brian Cox was postponed due to the pandemic. Rather than do nothing, he decided he would instead go on a tour of over a hundred bookshops, from Wigtown to Penzance; from Swansea to Margate. Pac...

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...

Settling in after the flurry of activity involved in our move to France we started to take stock of our local community discovering almost immediately that there were two distinct groups in the area, the French and the British. We were to be surprised how much amusement this engendered, particularly with regard to the curious behaviour of some of our compatriots. Visitors, entertained by our accounts, suggested that our experiences merited publication. This book is the result, introducing ...

Bold, beautiful and constantly surprising essays about life, loss, joy and the fabric of memory. In this deftly woven work Flora Feltham explores the corners where her memories are stashed: the archive vault, her mother' s house, a marriage counsellor' s office, the tip and New World. She takes us on a frenzied bender in Croatia, learns tapestry and meets romance novelists, all while wondering how families and relationships absorb the past, given everything we don' t say about grief, menta...