Fiction Archives

Dona Nobis Pacem

by David Szalay,

I was present when someone asked the poet Sophocles: “How’s your sex life, Sophocles? Can you still make love to a woman?” “Shush, man,” the poet replied. “I am very…

JB & FD

by John Edgar Wideman,

(1) To need his glasses and be struck by an awareness that they are not at hand, an ordinary enough circumstance for Frederick Douglass, except sometimes it’s accompanied by a…

A Window To The World

by Isaac Bashevis Singer,

Some writers begin to write with talent, quickly earn a reputation among readers and critics, and then are suddenly silenced forever. We had two such men at the Yiddish Writers’…

Cold Fish

by Dyannah Byington,

Key West is Neil’s idea, and Mara can’t think of a reason to refuse. She knows next to nothing about the Keys, only that it’s expensive to buy bread and…

In This One

by Stephen Dixon,

In this one he’ll only have one daughter and no other child. In this one he’ll be divorced and his ex-wife will live in California. In this one he’ll live…

The Quiet Car

by Joyce Carol Oates,

Nowhere are we so exposed, so vulnerable, as on an elevated platform at a suburban train depot. In balmy weather, choosing to stand outside to await the 11:17 a.m. to…

Home

by Alice McDermott,

Lee was the daughter of his mother’s hairdresser. Jim had been hearing about, but not really listening to, the saga of her troubles for what must have been a couple…

Four in Prose

by Diane Williams,

I. THE PERVERTED MESSAGE The sky was roseate at the end of the day, in the east rather than in the west — all wrong — when I encountered a mother and…

Vladivostok Station

by Paul Yoon,

On my way home today I saw someone in the field, someone I once knew. I was coming down the road from a hill and saw him from a distance.…

Let’s Go to the Videotape

by Fiona Maazel,

The finalists were him and some other people, but really there was just him. Him filming his boy, who was riding a bike for the first time. A red-and-blue Spider-Man…

A Shrinking World, An Opening Sky

by Vince Passaro,

The old woman’s husband, even older than she, has lived long enough. She is careful not to say this to her daughters, to her brother, to the doctors. He’s had…

Plexiglass

by Don DeLillo,

I sat in a taxi with Emma and her son, Stak, all three bodies muscled into the rear seat, and the boy checked the driver’s I.D. and immediately began to…

Glory

by Lesley Nneka Arimah,

When Glory’s parents christened her Glorybetogod Ngozi Akunyili, they did not foresee Facebook’s “real name” policy, nor the weeks she would spend populating forms and submitting copies of her bills…

The Trusted Traveler

by Joseph O’Neill,

For almost a decade, Chris and I have received an annual visit from one of my former students, Jack Bail. This year is different. When, as usual, he emails to…

“We’ve Only Just Begun”

by Anne Carson,

They got into our car at a stoplight. It was cold. We never lock the doors in back. There were two of them. At the apartment they terrorized us. It…

Too Good to Be True

by Michelle Huneven,

Harriet says she will take Gayle to A.A. meetings. Lois offers to pay her extra for gas and time, but Harriet says no, being of service is essential to her…

Williamsburg Bridge

by John Edgar Wideman,

To be absolutely certain I rode the F train from my relatively quiet Lower East Side neighborhood to 34th Street and set myself adrift in the crowds around Penn Station…

Late

by Steven Millhauser,

Because Valeria is always late, because I’d like to have dinner with her at seven, and because, if I ask her to meet me at the restaurant at seven, I…

Tremendous Machine

by Salvatore Scibona,

Spindling, white Fjóla Neergaard, in dun wool slacks, her marble face perched on a whorl of scarves, drove her father’s Mercedes through a trash-blown lane of reupholsterers and auto-body shops…

Leap Day

by Austin Smith,

It was February and the rungs were cold as rods of ice. Beneath the suit he’d never had the occasion to get married in, Ernie Boettner was wearing his favorite…

One Day Less

by Clarice Lispector,

I doubt that death will come. Death? Could it be that the days, so long, will end? That’s how I daydream, calm, quiet. Could it be that death is a…

Interesting Facts

by Adam Johnson,

Interesting fact: Toucan cereal bedspread to my plunge and deliver. It’s okay if you can’t make sense of that. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t grasp it either. The…

For Something to Do

by Elmore Leonard,

Past Howell, he kept the speedometer needle at seventy for almost six miles, until he was in sight of the mailbox. Then he eased his foot from the accelerator, braked,…

If You Cannot Go to Sleep

by Emily Mitchell,

First, she tries counting. The numbers move sluggishly through her head in single file, like people in a line at the post office or at the bank or at the…

No Slant to the Sun

by T. C. Boyle,

There was no slant to the sun — it was just there, overhead, burning, making him sweat, making his underwear bind and the shirt stick to his back as if it had been…

Family Life

by Alejandro Zambra,

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell It’s not hot out, it’s not cold. A shy, sharp sun overcomes the clouds, and the sky looks, at times, truly clean, like…

Two Parts

by Stephen Dixon,

Let’s see, how do I start this? With my father or with Lotte? My father. It’s already more formed in my head, so it’ll be easier getting into. I told…

Forbidden City

by Geoff Dyer,

On the morning of his visit to the Forbidden City, the last day of his China trip, James woke exhausted, as he had almost every day he had been there.…

Climbers

by Helen DeWitt,

“The thing you have to understand is that I really don’t understand people.” Gil sat on a squashy old sofa, legs akimbo, forearms on thighs. He was wearing a dark-green…

The House on Bony Lake

by Robert Boswell,

The lake is still and the stars are mammoth. She glides beneath the surface, a dark form he can follow but cannot see until she passes through starlight, this long-limbed…

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