The Essential Brief Encounters
Icons and originators, trailblazers and masters: where to start when navigating the canon. Discover the voices that have left a lasting mark on literature.
Dylan Thomas (Author)
Dylan Thomas’s vivid, affectionate portrait of youth - and the journey towards finding one’s own artistic voice
A boy grows up in a small Welsh town, moving through school, family life and first encounters with the wider world in moments of mischief and self-discovery. Along the way, a sensibility begins to take shape – playful, observant and alive to the strangeness of the everyday.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Jacqueline Harpman (Author)
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Ros Schwartz (Translator)
A startling new collection of three never-before-translated stories, from the author of I Who Have Never Known Men
In the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman wanders the forest, forbidden from ever leaving its strange depths. As part of her rigid schooling, a teenage girl is barred from questioning the dogma she is taught to believe. Locked in a loveless marriage, a young woman satisfies her husband’s desires, twice-weekly, as directed – until she begins to pursue her own.
Includes the stories: The Ardennes Forest, The Outcast and The Broom Cupboard
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Margaret Atwood (Author)
This miniature array of perfect stories by the legendary Margaret Atwood flash before us the joys and despairs of mothers good and bad, evoking laughter, compassion and recognition in us all.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.
Toni Morrison (Author)
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Zadie Smith (Introducer)
A stunning, timeless story about race, friendship, what keeps us apart and what drives us apart, from the one and only Toni Morrison, with an introduction by Zadie Smith.
Twyla and Roberta met in a girls’ shelter as children. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then on opposing sides of a protest. The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every issue, but the persistence of their bond is undeniable.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Author)
Two of Dostoevsky's most powerful novellas of obsession, cruelty, and the fragility of the heart
A pawnbroker paces beside his young wife’s body, attempting to piece together the circumstances that led to her suicide. A young man is overwhelmed by his own contentment and sows his ruin in a fierce attempt to protect it.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Jane Austen (Author)
Outrageous, and wickedly funny, Lady Susan introduces Jane Austen at her most scandalous
Recently widowed and dangerously charming, Lady Susan Vernon arrives among her relatives determined to secure her own advantage. Through a flurry of letters, alliances shift, affections are tested, and reputations quietly unravel. Lady Susan is Jane Austen’s sharp, mischievous portrait of a woman who refuses to behave. Bold, manipulative and irresistibly alive, it reveals Austen at her most daring – and her most amused.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Ursula K. Le Guin (Author)
Ursula k. Le Guin's beautifully realised space epic of two young friends finding their lives steer a new, and unexpected course
As the spaceship Discovery makes its slow way towards its destination – New Earth – Hsing and Luis come of age together. Born in the middle of this multigenerational journey, they have never known life beyond the ship and never expect to. But just as their lives seem to be unfolding as decreed, a revelation about Discovery’s true course throws everything they know into question.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Haruki Murakami (Author)
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Ted Goossen (Translator)
A nostalgic, jazz-soaked love-letter to a youth spent in pursuit of simple pleasures, from the Japan's most celebrated contemporary storyteller, Haruki Murakami
Haunted by memories of a doomed love affair, and living in something of a strange hiatus in Tokyo, Pinball, 1973's narrator finds himself dreaming of the days he used to wile away playing pinball in J's Bar. Until one day he embarks on a quest: to find the exact model of pinball machine he played years earlier - the infamous three-flipper Spaceship.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Virginia Woolf (Author)
In a single afternoon's walk, Virginia Woolf captures the infinite life of a garden...
A couple pause among the flowerbeds, their thoughts drifting apart. A woman’s mind fixes on a small, troubling mark on the wall. A chance meeting becomes an imagined life, rich with longing and regret. In six luminous, experimental stories, Virginia Woolf remakes the short story as a space of transcendence. Moving fluidly between inner lives and outward scenes, Kew Gardens captures moments of consciousness as they shimmer, fracture and pass, revealing the beauty and strangeness of everyday existence.
Includes the stories: Kew Gardens, The Mark on the Wall, An Unwritten Novel, Monday or Tuesday, The String Quartet and Blue & Green
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Franz Kafka (Author)
Five of Franz Kafka’s most compelling short animal stories, where fable, dark humour and unease collide
A community gathers to listen to the singing of a mouse. An ape addresses an academy to explain how he became human. A creature digs ever deeper into its burrow, gripped by fear of what might be lurking outside. In these strange and unsettling stories, animals speak plainly about their hopes, fears and fixations.
Includes the stories: Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk, A Report to an Academy, The Burrow, The New Advocate and Investigations of a Dog
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Mary Shelley (Author)
Three supernatural tales of longing and loss from the grand-dame of Gothic fiction, Mary Shelly
When a storm drives their boat towards the rocks, a group of sailors is saved by the light of a ruined tower. The locals speak of the Invisible Girl who haunts it – a lost, wandering soul. But the truth is more disturbing, and far more human, than any ghost story.
Includes the stories: The Invisible Girl, The Mortal Immortal and The Mourner
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Bram Stoker (Author)
Step into the night where tombs lie open and wolves prowl under a cursed moon
A solitary traveller strays from the road on the eve of Walpurgis Night. Snow closes in, strange figures emerge, and an abandoned tomb offers shelter. But what begins as a detour becomes a brush with something far older and more deadly. Dracula’s Guest gathers Bram Stoker’s eerie short fiction, steeped in dread and foreboding – four tales that explore the thin line between the rational world and the shadows that constantly close in on it.
Include the stories: Dracula’s Guest, The Judge’s House, The Squaw, The Burial of the Rats
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Author)
The classic, moving tale of a man born old, destined to die young, and live at odds with his time
To the confusion and embarrassment of his family, Benjamin Button is born an old man. As the years pass, he grows younger – moving against the current of ordinary life. While those around him age as expected, Benjamin finds himself increasingly out of step, his relationships strained by a life no one else can share. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quietly unsettling tale of being a misfit to one’s time.
Includes the stories: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Winter Dreams and 'The Sensible Thing'
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Christopher Isherwood (Author)
Sally Bowles is the dazzling centrepiece of Goodbye to Berlin, distilling Isherwood's genius into the tale of one baudy, brilliant woman.
1930s Berlin is a realm of glamour and sleaze, repression and excess, threatened by a rising tide of tyranny. There, a lonely young Brit working on a novel is charmed by an English runaway and aspiring star, the delightfully decadent Sally Bowles. The intimate, fleeting connection they share will stay with him long after.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.
Italo Calvino (Author)
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William Weaver (Translator)
A magical, mystical novella about the art and power of storytelling, this is Italo Calvino's miniature masterpiece.
A group of travellers chance to meet, first in a castle, then in a tavern. Having mysteriously lost their powers of speech, they must tell their tales using only a deck of tarot cards. As their stories interlink and overlap, a fantastic, surreal and chaotic history of the human quest for meaning unfolds.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
