culture

The mountain When he made his first billion, Samir bought the top half of the mountain. Once his grandparents had lived at its foot but now he had a view to the sea and the mountains beyond. His first point of business was the road. Bulldozers,...

Dear friend, You ask about the ceremony. It was last week. I wore a pretty white cotton dress – my sister’s Lavinia’s. (You understand how the mind dawdles on the path of time, how I must run to catch up with “now”.) I woke before dawn – lazy girl,...

It wasn’t a jacket I would buy in my normal life, but we’d all been told to stay at home so things weren’t normal anyway. I usually stayed home of my own volition, but this time a man in rectangular glasses, standing in front of a cardboard sheet,...

A new work of short fiction from the Miles Franklin award-winning author of Too Much Lip.

“I can see the war in her eyes,” Samia tells Idriis one day, after getting a lashing from their mother Sagal. “Maybe the old anthem possessed her,” says Idriis. “Or maybe the war sliced her heart into smaller pieces of fleshy string?” Idriis...

The president wanted to make the call herself, but as a committee we felt this was risky. She saw her place in history, the first human to make direct contact with an alien civilisation; we saw a diplomatic catastrophe. Even if she managed the...