‘The Land of Sad Oranges’ by Ghassan Kanafani, translated by Barbara Harlow and Karen E. Riley

Short stories are so important to literary life in Palestine that contemporary Gazan writer Atef Abu Saif commented how “Gaza was an exporter of oranges and short stories”. Ghassan Kanafani, one of Palestine’s, and indeed the Arab world’s most renowned writers, wrote ‘The Land of Sad Oranges’, which has today become an enduring and powerful metaphor of the pain of Palestinian exile and Naqba. Written plainly and rendered through a memory of a child, the text is a living testimony to not only the affective power of the short story form, but also its ability to contain, despite (possibly because of) its constrained and breviloquent spaces, a great, mythical imagination. In Kanafani’s story, the imagination is that of an exiled family tied to their homeland through oranges, the groves of which “follow them along the road”.

First published as ard al-burtuqal al-hazin, 1963. Collected in English translation in Palestine’s Children: Returning to Haifa and Other Stories, Lynne Riener, 2000

‘Nawabdin Electrician’ by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Reminiscent, in a way, of Munshi Premchand, the doyen of Hindi prose fiction, Daniyal Mueenuddin renders the senses and colours of rural Pakistani life with such veracity and wit that it makes In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, the collection which opens with ‘Nawabdin Electrician’, excellent, edge-of-the-seat-reading. When I first read him, I thought Mueenuddin was like a rogue Premchand, subverting moral codes and high-literary customs with an almost Chekhovian sensibility. I am choosing ‘Nawabdin Electrician’ over the other stories in the collection out of a personal affection for the poor electrician. Among my own powers as a boy growing up in rural India was to slow down the revolutions of electricity meters in return for a little change (which I would then use to buy video-game cassettes). Ah, life as a petty criminal! Still less stressful than academia.

First published in The New Yorker, 27 August 2007 issue, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Bloomsbury, 2010

‘Women of Algiers in their Apartment’ by Assia Djebar, translated by Marjolijn De Jager

When working on the writing of Indian Partition, I was drawn into reading literatures of partitions and apartheids elsewhere, in Ireland, South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and, in an odd way, French-Algeria. I’d read a paper about the impossibility of translating literatures of Partition, literatures that dwell, inevitably, in the in-between, in the impossible space between languages, cultures, and competing national imaginaries. I picked up Assia Djebar’s collection after encountering a quote from her… which I can no longer find… something about her interest in sounds: limpid French and perfect Arabic. The way Djebar renders speech itself as an anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal act in the titular story is what draws me to this story, of Anne and Sarah’s female friendship, again and again. To those with academic curiosities, it is also provocative the way Djebar subverts the famous Eugene Delacroix painting by the same name in re-rendering the women of Algiers outside the mythical logics of Oriental France.

First published in French in Femmes d’Alger dans leur Appartement, 1980. First published in translation in Women of Algiers in their Apartment, University of Virginia Press, 1999

‘The Colossus of Rhodes’ by Chris Power

If you want a chronicler of modern life, a life in perpetual motion, look no further than Chris Power. Every short story in Mothers, his first collection, is technically accomplished, swarming with fleshy characters and deep, intersecting plotlines. What attracts me to Power’s writing is his ability to capture, in the very pulse of his prose, the unsteady nature of experience itself. His characters are suspended in a state in which neither the past is distant, nor the future ceasing to loom. Place, or a sense thereof, is not a stable referent in his stories, but a fleeting junction. I wouldn’t give much away, but I have chosen ‘The Colossus of Rhodes’ over other brilliant texts in the collection because it demonstrates the kind of literary intimacy one can achieve by looking deep into the self and tapping into its fears.

First published in Mothers, Faber, 2018

‘The Great Awake’ by Julia Armfield

The most unheimlich you can get, really. The new Angela Carter, I told a friend. Far better, she replied. I read it in 2018 after it won The White Review short story prize and wished immediately—in a way you do when you come across a great piece of writing—that I had first struck upon this lush idea of an insomniac plague of dissociative, wraith-like creatures. I doubt, all the same, that there is anyone else who could have written this story with the kind of imaginative gusto that is Julia Armfield’s rare gift. It works through echoes and resonances, revealing, through what Armfield calls in an interview “a wolf on the dining table”, the many wolves we have on each our dining tables, lurking in our rooms. For a few days after reading the story I got into a habit of imagining what good my sleep, were it to step off my body “like a passenger from a carriage”, would be up to at cafes, libraries, lecture halls, by my bed at night. One day, I swear, I think I even saw it—sitting on my desk, marking exam papers.

First published in The White Review in April 2018, and available to read here; collected in Salt Slow, Picador, 2020

‘Manholes’ by Salma Ahmad

A progressively chaotic story—I’ve read it so many times, sent it to so many people. I don’t know what I can say without giving it away. Written with such confidence and such rare propulsive motion that it will leave you in splits. It is unpredictable, surprising at every turn, with an ending that leaves you stranded right upon that Gogolian overcoat that now stands in for the exemplary irresolution of the short story form. This is what the short story can do—capture by the fragment the absurdity of life that is so difficult to capture in its totality. If you know anything else the author has written, please do send to me. From time to time, I scour the internet for more.

First published in The White Review in April 2019, and available to read here

‘See it Slant’ by C Pam Zhang

Ever since I committed to writing, I have spent equal time and energy thinking about that one, most beastly of fears, which comes uninvitedly in tow: fraudulence. Imposterism. Paralysing fear in your own ability. So paralysing, in fact, that when you do muster any belief at all—be it scanty and tied up in knots—you wonder if it is all just an illusion? A spell of false comfort? C Pam Zhang—easily one of the most talented young writers at work today—pulls the ground beneath that question in this ingenious, incandescent short story with a gut-punch of an ending. Is all art, in fact, a delusion? Something ‘slant’, only a way of looking beyond which everything, indeed everything, is just ordinary. I don’t know how to describe or summarise short stories like this, but ever since having read it, I tell my friend—my ‘write club’ member—that all we need to write is ‘a three-minute study of light changing on a wall’. Read the story to find out if you agree or not.

Published in The Cut on January 17, 2020, and available to read here)

‘The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright’ by Ngūgī wa Thiong’o, translated by the author

From the great literary continent of Africa, from one of Africa’s greatest ever writers, perhaps the world’s most translated, anthologised short story, it would be difficult indeed to overstate the power of Ngūgī wa Thiong’o’s ‘The Upright Revolution, or Why Humans Walk Upright’. Written as a fable, in Kikuyu, ‘Ituĩka Rĩa Mũrũngarũ: Kana Kĩrĩa Gĩtũmaga Andũ Mathiĩ Marũngiĩ’, this is a story about how and why the humans began to walk upright. If you read this one, read it alongside Ngugi’s Decolonising the Mind, in which Ngūgī writes about the politics of language, and the violence of English. I have always read each body part in the fable as an African language, and the fable’s enduring refrain, that each body part must learn to walk with each other, as a call to Africa’s shared continental heritage. The Upright Revolution.

First published in Kikuyu as ‘Ituĩka Rĩa Mũrũngarũ: Kana Kĩrĩa Gĩtũmaga Andũ Mathiĩ Marũngiĩ’. Published in English in Translation Issue, Jalada Africa Trust, 2016, and available to read here. Indian publisher Seagull published an illustrated edition in 2019

Introduction

My next collection of short stories, Punch Lines (Potential Books, 2022), is among other things an examination of various meanings and uses of comedy punch lines in our lives from the hilarious finish to the painful heartbreak or the political message. Punch Lines’ catchphrase is the thin line separating jokes and tears. My anthology is made up of examples of short stories that successfully balance that tightrope between jokes and tears. Punch Lines will be out later this year. Neither Mr. Gibbs nor I could resist an April 1st joke.

‘The Overcoat’ by Nikolai Gogol translated by Ronald Wilks

A writer once told me that most people believed the ‘The Overcoat’ was about nothing. Really? A story about poverty, of our dreams of escaping our economic situations, and the sad but somehow comforting ending? How could someone be so arrogant, and certain, to sweep away ‘The Overcoat’? I’ve never spoken to that writer since.

Another Gogol anecdote. During the summers that I was a student I worked for the city of Toronto cleaning subway cars. The job was eight hours a day but there was really only work for four hours. The rest of the time I spent reading. One day this co-worker who I’d never met before, saw me reading a collection of Gogol short stories and said, “Gogol. A great Ukrainian writer.”
“Isn’t he Russian?” I asked.
“He was born in Ukraine.” He got up close to my face. “What’s your last name?”
“Popowich.”
“Popowich. A pure Ukraine name. Not Popovich? Popowich?”
“Right. Popowich.”

For the rest of the summer he would come by every day to see me and tell me about my last name. About Gogol. About Ukraine. Like many Canadians whose families came from elsewhere, our Ukrainian roots were forgotten by the time I was born. Except, of course, what our last names spoke of our pasts. I’ve thought about that man often since late 2021, his passion for Gogol, and especially his Ukrainian pride.

First published in Russian in 1842. First translated, as ‘The Cloak’, by Isabel Hapgood in St. John’s Eve, and Other Stories, Crowell, 1886. This translation available in Diary of a Madman, The Government Inspector & Selected Stories, Penguin Classics, 2005

‘Bartleby the Scrivener’ by Herman Melville

Melville’s syntax has always baffled me. And for the first few pages of ‘Bartleby’ I’m always telling myself off for ever recommending this story. Then the sentences arrange themselves into focus. The characters Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut arrive on the scene. And I wish, hope, that this time Bartleby is going to make it through.

A few errant thoughts — should we read Bartleby’s line “I would prefer not to” as a catchphrase? Or that ‘Bartleby’ is possibly Melville’s attempt at breaking into TV with a pilot about dysfunctional law clerks?

First published in Putnam’s Magazine, November-December 1853, and collected in The Piazza Tales, Dix & Edwards, 1856. Now widely available, including in Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories, Penguin Classics. Available online at Project Gutenberg

‘My Wrongs 8245-8249 & 117’ by Chris Morris

Chris Morris’s radio series Blue Jam had a life-changing effect on my writing and my understanding of comedy. At some point I was working in an office building, high up on the twenty-seventh floor, with the blinds closed at all times. This was because of sound fears that people might have been spying on us from the hotels across the street. Sadly, the day-to-day routine of the job took away the romance of spying and bribes and classified documents.

One winter day a co-worker handed me the entire radio series of Blue Jam. The twisted humour was a perfect soundtrack for that job. But the most impressive part of Blue Jam was that the jokes weren’t chasing laughs. These were jokes that upended the listener emotionally. From our fears of being bad parents, of trying to cope with terrible doctors, of losing our child, and in the case of ‘My Wrongs’ of coping with depression. Morris captures depression with the many close-ups of Paddy Considine and Rothko the Doberman Pinscher and frenetic editing. In ‘My Wrongs’ we’re trapped in a sustained moment of disintegration without that moment ever being cheated by a false laugh.

Warp Films, November, 2002; available to watch online here

‘The Swimmer’ by John Cheever

Neddy Merrill decides one lazy fine Sunday to swim back to his home through all the swimming pools in the county. A funny idea. Almost a gimmick. But as Neddy gets home, summer has passed, the leaves have fallen, and Neddy’s confidence and youthfulness are gone and the gimmick has worn away. In darkness, he reaches his completely empty and abandoned house. That’s always what I remember first about ‘The Swimmer’. The darkness. As I’m reading it again, I get the sense of what is happening to Neddy, but I know I’ll lose the story’s meaning again. I can’t explain why. The story of Neddy Merrill’s emotional and financial downfall makes sense but the story slips away for me every time.

First published in The New Yorker, 1964, and available to subscribers to read here. Collected in The Brigadier and the Golf Widow, Harper & Row, 1964, and The Stories of John Cheever, Alfred A. Knopf, 1978; now Collected Stories, Vintage Classics, 2010

‘Lizzie & Sarah’ by Julia Davis and Jessica Hynes

‘Lizzie & Sarah’ was a pilot, made for BBC 2 that never got commissioned for a series. I’m watching it now with the sound off because I’m on a train and howling just at Davis & Hynes’ facial expressions. Their facial expressions read as if the two of them are acting in a normal sitcom pulling normal sitcom faces. But ‘Lizzie & Sarah’ is not a normal sitcom. This is a tough, bleak, show about domestic abuse. Every time I watch it I’m in awe of Davis & Hynes ability to pull the show off. The half hour that is available doesn’t show us something that could have been — the half hour stands as a perfect story on its own.

BBC 2, 2010