Brief Encounters
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From the author of I Who Have Never Known Men comes a startling new collection of three never-before-translated stories, each plumbing the depths of that most necessary human instinct: defiance.
Wandering the forest in the wake of some unfathomable war, a woman and her fellow survivors are forbidden from leaving its boundaries or pausing in their march through its strange depths.
As part of her rigid shcooling, a teenage girl is barred from questioning the dogma she is taught to believe – her punishment for doing so will be as disturbing as it is disproportiante.
Locked in a loveless marriage, a young woman satisfies her husband’s desires, twice-weekly, as directed. She has not yet thought to pursue her own.
In varying ways, and across varying worlds, each of these women are trapped. Do they have the will to escape?
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Venus Smiles (and Other Vermillion Sands Stories)
Out over the towering Coral D, sky artists paint the sky with clouds. A musical statue is broken down, but finds new life in unwanted places. A mysterious new resident introduces a new way of making poetry - aided by machine. Drawing together some of the most mesmerising and mind-blowing stories from J.G. Ballard's Vermillion Sands art-infused universe, this short collection is a passport into the genius of science fiction's most visionary pioneer.
Includes the stories: ‘Cry Hope, Cry Fury!’, ‘The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral-D’, ‘Venus Smiles’ and ‘Studio 5, The Stars’
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
Young at the Time
From one of the greatest Chinese authors of the twentieth century, these delicate stories illuminate the most intimate matters of the human heart - now available in English for the very first time.
Since childhood, Ruliang has had the peculiar habit of sketching a certain profile in the margins of his books. He has mapped out this same face, over and over again, without knowing why - until he meets Cythnia. As brief and evocative as sketches themselves, these five stories of lost loves, nostalgia and migration reveal a master of feeling at the peak of her powers.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days