A selection of short stories
How many debut collections does it take to stand up to one of the most accomplished short-story writers of the…
Short and surreal
‘I just wanted the damn story to ask the right questions,’ sighs a disaffected journalist in Jack Livings’s debut collection…
The decisive moment
The short story likes to play the underdog. Famously unfavoured by publishers, it has none of the commercial clout of…
The spiritual in landscape
‘Valleys breathe, heaven and earth move together,/ daisies push inches of yellow air, vegetables tremble,/ grass shimmers green…’ The characteristic…
Flirting with magic realism
A preview of Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird appeared in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists issue in April last…
Boundless blessings
Ann Patchett’s novels revel in the tightly constructed ecosystems imagined for their characters: an opera singer besieged among diplomats in…
Flight of the imagination
Towards the end of his life, Georges Braque described his vision in the following terms: ‘No object can be tied…
The stuff of dreams
The exhibition The Renaissance and Dream at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris (until 26 January 2014) explores how artists…
Notes on…The house museums of Paris
It doesn’t matter how many times they expand the Louvre or the Musée d’Orsay, Paris’s past is so colossally rich…
