From high above the Escapement, from the perspective of a flying caique or other clown bird, the railway line appeared more like a sort of tangled mandala, following not a straight path but the twisting contours of the landscape …
Lavie Tidhar
Lavie Tidhar is the author of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize winning and Premio Roma nominee A Man Lies Dreaming (2014), the World Fantasy Award winning Osama (2011) and of the Campbell Award winning and Locus and Clarke Award nominated Central Station (2016). His latest novels are Unholy Land (2018) and first children’s novel Candy (2018). He is the author of many other novels, novellas and short stories.
My Struggle
From beyond the ghetto walls come the peal of church bells; pure and clear, clear and pure the sound fills the night above the ghetto, and Shomer and the children stop and listen to it, spellbound in their captivity.
Red Christmas
In another time and place, Shomer still has Fanya and the children. He watches his wife as she lights the Hannukah candles on the windowsill. A hush has settled over the ghetto, and the children, Avrom and Bina, watch the weak, flickering lights of the candle stubs. Shomer watches them too, how they struggle to survive, to hold this flickering flame. He knows that soon, no matter what he’d do, these lights will burn out and die.
The Drowned Celestial
Colt was playing cards when trouble crawled in through the door, in the shape of a dead man who didn’t yet know he was dead.
Agent of V.A.L.I.S.
A thing that wore Johnny Carson’s face came over, light on its feet. “Tonight I’m delighted to say we have the famous Agent Dydimus with us!” he said. The audience applauded. It was the same people from the courthouse, the same people, he realised, who had gathered to listen to him up by the old church. Mary was amongst them. She smiled at him, brilliantly.
Titanic!
10 April 1912
When I come on board the ship I pay little heed to her splendour; nor to the gaily–strewn lines of coloured electric lights, nor to the polished brass of the crew’s jacket uniforms, nor to the crowds at the dock in Southampton, waving handkerchiefs and pushing and shoving for a better look; nor to my fellow passengers.
Love Is a Parasite Meme
“Love is a parasite meme,” she’d told him once. It would have been Amsterdam, with the poisoned canals and a gibbous moon, made green with atmospheric pollution, gloaming over Station Centraal.
The Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion
It was afternoon, after school had ended for the day. Sash had been working in the hydroponics gardens, helping the adults with the delicate work of picking the buds. It was flowering time, and the ganja plants were at the end of their cycle.
All the Wonder in the World
It began, the way these things usually do, with a rain of frogs.
The frogs made a sound like wet pebbles as they hit the old copper roof of his shack; Ibrahim the alte-zachen man sat outside in the shade of the fig tree and watched out over Haifa’s harbour.