International Literary Fiction

All 10 shortlisted titles for the BBC International Short Story Award 2012: 'Escape Routes' by Lucy Caldwell, 'The Goose Father' by Krys Lee, 'Sanctuary' by Henrietta Rose-Innes, 'Even Pretty Eyes Commit Crimes' by M.J. Hyland, 'Black Vodka' by Deborah Levy, 'East of the West' by Miroslav Penkov, 'A Lovely and Terrible Thing' by Chris Womersley, 'In the Basement' by Adam T. Ross, 'Before He Left the Family' by Carrie Tiffany, and 'The iHole' by Julian Gough.

Down market lanes crammed with too many people, dogs, and rickshaws lies a jumble of tin-roofed homes where nine-year-old Jai lives with his family. From his doorway, he can spot the glittering lights of the city’s fancy high-rises, and though his mother works as a maid in one, to him they seem 1,000 miles away. Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line plunges listeners deep into this neighborhood to trace the unfolding of a tragedy through the eyes of a child as he has his first perilous collisions with an unjust and complicated wider world.

"Veridica relazione degli strani eventi accaduti nella nostra città l'inverno 1888, così come da me registrati..." Con queste parole, cariche di mistero e aspettativa, inizia il documento che il narratore dice di aver trovato nel cassetto segreto di un mobile di famiglia. E ben più che strani sono gli eventi che si svolgono in una ricca e tranquilla città di mare affacciata sul Baltico negli anni in cui la navigazione a vapore ha ormai sostituito i grandi velieri.

So. We were Americans abroad. We weren’t the doomed travellers in a Paul Bowles novel, and we weren’t the idealists or the malarial, religion-damaged burnouts in something by Greene; but we were people far from home nevertheless. Our naivety didn’t have political consequences. We had GPS in our smartphones. I don’t think we were alcoholics. Our passports were in the same drawer as our collection of international adapters, none of which seemed to fit in Brazilian wall sockets. My husband was in the chrysalis stage of becoming a rich man, and idealism was never my vice.

Rivers of Gold is the first in the More series of dystopian thrillers featuring MARSOC operator Everett "Ever" More and NYPD Detective Sixto Santiago. The series is set in the Second Great Depression. The primary locale is New York City. The economy is shattered, the government is helpless, and crime and disease run rampant. An underground party circuit has developed, wherein rival cartels use a network of taxicabs to move contraband around the city.

London, 1849. As a cholera epidemic draws nearer, Joshua Jeavons, engineer, is working on his great drain plan for the capital. When the deaths begin, he works even more furiously, driven by the vision of a reborn London freed of rotting sewers. Then his beautiful young wife, Isobella, disappears, and Joshua must turn his attention to even more perplexing matters. His search for the answers to the mysteries that surround him leads from glittering Haymarket cafes to London's murky underworld.

Eighteen-year-old Hilary Anson’s startling good looks and wanton ways scandalize the denizens of sleepy Kelso County, but young Sam Mitchell is instantly enthralled by his new friend. Over one sun-soaked summer, Hilary vastly improves Sam’s equestrian skills, while dropping inscrutable details about her past in apartheid-era South Africa. Mysteries mount until Hilary vanishes, leaving at least one unsolved murder in her wake. Many years and two failed marriages later, Sam sets out for South Africa, determined to crack the enigma of Hilary Anson.

Can you redeem your life in a corrupt world? That's the question for Callie Byrne, a street savvy Iraq vet recently out of drug rehab for heroin addiction, trying to reignite her life and regain custody of her son. Bartending in Philadelphia when a friend gets entangled with her ex-dealer, Callie must navigate the underground world of drug and sex trafficking between the jungles of Guatemala and a shady Manhattan leather import business.

Within the Tokyo underworld there is an industry which exists to break up marriages. It is known today as 'wakaresaseya' - agents who, for a fee, can be hired by one spouse to seduce the other and provide grounds for divorce on favourable terms. Inspired by a real case, this is the story of Kaitaro Nakamura, a wakaresaseya agent, who is hired by a man to seduce his wife. Kaitaro falls in love with his target, Rina, and after the divorce she moves in with him, unaware of his role in the demise of her marriage.

帝国陸軍の異端児とも渾名された昭和の陸軍軍人、石原莞爾の政治論文。

底本は「最終戦争論・戦争史大観」［中央公論社、1993（平成5）年］。

1940（昭和15）年5月に京都で行われた「人類の前史終わらんとす」の講演内容が元になっている。太平洋戦争の前夜、国防の危機を背景に、日蓮信仰と戦史研究から生まれたこの特異な予言の書は、満州事変を主導し日本の運命を変えた、昭和陸軍の異端児石原を理解する要石である。

In the Cambodian hinterlands, a lone Western prisoner suffers through a hot, muddy, interminable sentence. Wasted by repeated torture, lack of sleep, malnutrition, and psychotropic drugs, he has been abandoned. His years of exemplary service to his government mean nothing. No one is coming for him.

Vittoria, as she's known in Italy, is a small-time model and actress, recognisable but hard to place. Even though she's married to fading writer Frank Paris, Vittoria knows that she's really Vicki Wilson from Texas and that her deepest loyalty is to her brother, Johnny, who's been there for her from childhood, when he dealt decisively with the unwanted attention she got from other boys. Guided by Johnny, Vittoria enters the upper circles of Roman society. Before long, she's mingling with the high rollers, corrupt senators, and powerful movers.

A hit-and-run on a woodland road near Amsterdam involving an Afghan boy is connected to a powerful international crime syndicate. Journalist Farah Hafez, together with her colleague Paul Chapelle, gets caught up in an investigation that takes them all the way to Moscow and has greater political and personal ramifications than they bargained for. After this perilous journey, their lives will never be the same again.

Prague in the 1950s is a city of numerous small terrors, of political tyranny, corruption, and surveillance. There is no way of knowing whether one's neighbor is spying for the government, or what one's supposed friend will say under pressure to a state security agent. A loyal party member might be imprisoned or executed as quickly as a traitor; innocence means nothing for a person caught in a government trap.