Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson Read it here in about 10 minutes. Thinking about why I love it… I love stories that are divided into sections, and in this particular story we have a division into two sections, although there’s no clear reason why that is (i.e. there are no section titles; theContinue reading “A short story I recently read”
Category Archives: Short story analysis
A short story I recently read
She Sheds Her Skin, by Raven Jakubowski Read it here in about 15 minutes. Thinking about why I love it… This is an unusual love-horror story, about an incompatible couple who’ve been desperately trying to make it work, now finally facing up to the fact that their love is, and always has been, doomed. IContinue reading “A short story I recently read”
A short story I recently re-read
The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson Read it here in less than 20 minutes. Thinking about why I love it… Halloween month is almost upon us, so what better than a bit of Shirley Jackson to get us in the mood for spooks and scares. I love this story because it’s shocking. The first time youContinue reading “A short story I recently re-read”
A short story I recently read
Paradise, by Hannah Lillith Assadi Read it here in about half an hour. Thinking about why I love it… I first read this story in 2020 (it was one of my ‘Top 10’ of that year), but have recently re-read it. I live in Egypt now, and teach students from this country as well asContinue reading “A short story I recently read”
A short protest story
‘Lather and Nothing Else’, by Hernando Tellez Read it here in less than 15 minutes. In relation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 2022 Winter Olympics, and everything else happening in the world today that shouldn’t be, thinking about how we can use literature to protest… Tellez was a Colombian journalist and author, who livedContinue reading “A short protest story”
A short protest story
‘Saboteur’, by Ha Jin Read it here in about 15 minutes. In relation to the 2022 Winter Olympics, thinking about how we can use literature to protest… Jin was born in China. He was studying his PhD in America when the Tiananmen massacre occurred, and, disillusioned, decided to remain in the US, where he nowContinue reading “A short protest story”
A short protest story
‘Children of the Sea’, by Edwidge Danticat Read it here in about 30 minutes. In relation to the 2022 Winter Olympics, thinking about how we can use literature to protest… Danticat was born in Haiti, to Haitian parents, but later became an American citizen. Her short stories (I haven’t read any of her novels) generallyContinue reading “A short protest story”
A short protest story
‘Condensed Milk’, by Varlam Shalamov (trans. John Glad) Read it here in 6 minutes. In relation to the 2022 Winter Olympics, thinking about how we can use literature to protest… Shalamov spent almost one-quarter of his life in Russian gulags (forced-labour camps), for being critical of, and protesting against, his own government. This story presumablyContinue reading “A short protest story”
A short protest story
‘Zimmer Land’, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah Read it here in about 35 minutes. In relation to the 2022 Winter Olympics, thinking about how we can use literature to protest… Adjei-Brenyah uses satire and surrealism in a near-futuristic story to, ironically, paint what I think is probably a rather realistic picture of the experience of beingContinue reading “A short protest story”
A short protest story
‘The Intoxicated Years’, by Mariana Enriquez (trans. Megan McDowell) Read it here in about 35 minutes. In relation to the 2022 Winter Olympics, thinking about how we can use literature to protest… Enriquez is from Argentina, and many of the short stories in her two English collections – Things We Lost in the Fire, andContinue reading “A short protest story”
Mina Ma 