Utdrag ur Den sista gåvan En dag I EN DAG, LÅNGT innan oroligheterna började, smet han i väg utan att säga ett ord till någon och vände aldrig tillbaka. Och så en annan dag, fyrtiotre år senare, föll han ihop alldeles innanför ytterdörren till sitt hus i en liten stad i England. Dagen var långt…

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Gj7_oN8QEiQ Watch Abdulrazak Gurnah read the excerpt from By the Sea. Excerpt from By the Sea I speak to maps. And sometimes they say something back to me. This is not as strange as it sounds, nor is it an unheard of thing. Before maps the world was limitless. It was maps that gave it…

Excerpts from Flights   HERE I AM I’m а few years old. I’m sitting on the window sill, surrounded by strewn toys and toppled-over block towers and dolls with bulging eyes. It’s dark in the house, and the air in the rooms slowly cools, dims. There’s no one else here; they’ve left, they’re gone, though…

Excerpt from Voices from Chernobyl Children’s Chorus Alyosha Belskiy, 9; Anya Bogush, 10; Natasha Dvoretskaya, 16; Lena Zhudro, 15; Yura Zhuk, 15; Olya Zvonak, 10; Snezhana Zinevich, 16; Ira Kudryacheva, 14; Ylya Kasko, 11; Vanya Kovarov, 12; Vadim Karsnosolnyshko, 9; Vasya Mikulich, 15; Anton Nashivankin, 14; Marat Tatartsev, 16; Yulia Taraskina, 15; Katya Shevchuk, 15;…

In Sight of the Lake Excerpt from Dear Life: Stories A woman goes to her doctor to have a prescription renewed. But the doctor is not there. It’s her day off. In fact the woman has got the day wrong, she has mixed up Monday with Tuesday. This is the very thing she wanted to…

French Extrait d’Onitsha Le Surabaya, un navire de trois cents tonneaux, déjà vieux, de la Holland Africa Line, venait de quitter les eaux sales de l’estuaire de la Gironde et faisait route vers la côte ouest de l’Afrique, et Fintan regardait sa mère comme si c’était pour la première fois. Peut-être qu’il n’avait jamais senti…

English Excerpt from Onitsha The Surabaya, an aging three-hundred-ton ship of the Holland Africa Line, had just left the dirty waters of the Gironde estuary, bound for the west coast of Africa, and Fintan looked at his mother as if it were for the first time. Perhaps he had never before realized…

Excerpt from Never Let Me Go We were fifteen by then, already into our last year at Hailsham. We’d been in the pavilion getting ready for a game of rounders. The boys were going through a phase of “enjoying” rounders in order to flirt with us, so there were over thirty of us that afternoon.…

Excerpts from Disgrace (Pages 111-112 and 183-184) As gently as he can, he offers his question again. ‘Lucy, my dearest, why don’t you want to tell? It was a crime. There is no shame in being the object of a crime. You did not choose to be the object. You are an innocent party.’ Sitting…

Excerpt from Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago English N ow they are ready to leave. Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço contemplates the clear blue expanse above, cloudless and with a sun as brilliant as a glittering monstrance, then he looks at Baltasar, who is holding the rope with which they will close the sails, and then…