Introduction

I started reading short fiction properly when I entered the world of full-time work. A novel is for stretching out an afternoon in a bed or a bath, whereas a story is for the morning train, the lunch break, the last exhausted minutes before sleep sets in. George Saunders, the contemporary story writer who understands this the most, once published a piece on a Chipotle burrito wrapper. The greatest short fiction not only fits into the gaps in work-time, clock-time – all the alarms and schedules and deadlines that make up our days – it explodes them, making them somehow bigger, slower, stranger.Here are twelve stories that do just that.