Fiction - Five Dials

‘We have an expectation that loss comes all at once.’

Avni Doshi discusses her novel, Burnt Sugar

Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar is a love story: a tale of obsession and betrayal. But not between lovers: between mother and daughter. Their unsettled relationship sp... Read more

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

by Philippe Besson

I was seventeen years old when I read The Lover for the first time. It was the autumn of 1984, the book had just come out, and people were talking about it a lo... Read more

‘Another thing that fascinates me: one sentence can reveal so much about a person.’

A conversation with Lydia Davis

This month I read Lydia Davis’s latest, Essays, before our arranged phone conversation. Davis’s writing voice is always articulate and persuasive, especially wh... Read more

Edna O’Brien, ‘Girl’ and the author’s right to freedom of movement

by Nathalie Olah

The adage ‘stay in your lane’, beloved of creative writing and journalism circles, has become a mantra for a generation seeking to navigate an era of fast-movin... Read more

Mother’s Day Card From a Wooden Object

by Ben Pester

Mother! At an unusual time of year, and in an impractical format, this card is to say thank you (again) for raising me. I realize it’s a recurring theme with... Read more

Speaking to Emilie Pine

The author of Notes to Self on blood, the body and Beckett

As an associate professor of modern drama, Emilie Pine is used to employing the disembodied writing style of academic discourse. The voice comes from afar, or a... Read more

God’s Photograph

by Joe Stretch

Every hundred yards or so the motorway lights lit her face. She tilted her head and administered eye drops. She’d used a bronze foundation to blend the new part of her face with the old.

Her Lovely Meaningless Face

Sara Collins on Wide Sargasso Sea

As much as I hold the novel dear, for all the work it does to penetrate the experience of the white Creole, Wide Sargasso Sea never seems to cross the border of black skin.

Hannah has been in bed for a week. She knows the different textures and pressures and eccentric lumps of her bed like the back of her hand. Better. She does not know the back of her hand very well at all.

‘Older black women, who writes about that?’

Bernardine Evaristo reveals why she nearly populated her novel, Girl, Woman, Other, with one hundred characters

Bernardine Evaristo is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction. Her other writing includes short fiction, drama, poetry, essays, li... Read more

‘Gayness, queerness, gender plurality, plural pronouns – Africa got there two millennia ago.’

Marlon James on the vast world of Black Leopard, Red Wolf

'War is complicated. Revenge is complicated. These things carry costs. It was very important for me, even though I was writing a fantasy novel, to make it a very grown up book.'

‘How could this possibly be mysterious? Where could this take us?’

A conversation with Tana French

'I’ve looked at criminal investigations through a detective’s eyes six times. But there are a lot of other people involved. There are witnesses, there are victims, there are suspects, there are perpetrators...'