by Deborah Levy
First published 2013
These ten stories from the BBC's 2012 international competition center on what goes missing. A wife walks away from her marriage. A husband disappears without explanation. A childhood friend who taught computer games vanishes from memory. One story features a pocket black hole that swallows whatever people want gone. The collection spans continents, drawing writers from South Africa, North America, Australia, Ireland, and the Balkans. Each story examines how people cope when something or someone important slips away. The London Olympics year marked the first time the BBC opened this award to English speakers worldwide. Judges including authors Anjali Joseph, Ross Raisin, and Michèle Roberts selected these stories for their exploration of loss and absence. The tales reveal how disappearance shapes the people left behind, whether through deliberate abandonment or mysterious vanishing.
Genres: fiction, short-stories, world-literature, literary-fiction, anthologies, contemporary
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: missing-person, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Australia, Balkans, Ireland, North America, South Africa
Period: 2012, London Olympics
208 pages · Paperback · Carcanet Press Ltd.