Mirja Unge

'Unge can do a lot with a little.' - The Guardian, Best Short Stories of 2011. 'It Was Just, Yesterday is both atmospheric and menacing.' - The Manchester Review. 'Unge has an unusual and arresting style that is worthy of recognition. At times, there is real beauty in her writing which often showcases a deeply poetic style and thrusts you into an atmosphere, a world, or a conflict with ease and immediacy.' - Kate Kerrow, The Short Review On Christmas Eve, a girl stalks an older man through wintery city streets, haunted by their shared past... In a remote woodland cottage, an eccentric explains to his granddaughter why he shoots cats whenever they make themselves too comfortable... In a checkout queue, a woman suddenly shows charity to a penniless guy she apparently doesn’t know... The characters in Mirja Unge’s debut collection are all, in their own way, evading something; whether failing to confront the true nature of an encounter, or avoiding responsibilities as a parent, sibling or friend. Abuse, betrayal and neglect lurk beneath a veneer of mutually maintained ‘normality’, waiting for an opportunity to resurface. Told, in most cases, through the eyes of teenage girls or young women, these stories exhibit a unique prose style that perfectly captures the conversational rhythms, and preoccupations, of their generation. Unge’s soft, winding syntax ushers the reader across the surface of each encounter at an unalterable pace — like the ever-betraying passage of time — whilst deftly hinting at the violence beneath. ‘A breathtaking and intensive read, full of warmth, humour and darkness.’ — Moa Eriksson, Hallandsposten ‘Mirja Unge has once again convinced me that she is one of the most important writers in Sweden today.’ — Eva Hultin, Nerikes Allehanda

It Was Just, Yesterday

Olga Tokarczuk

Jean Sprackland

Gyrdir Eliasson

Frode Grytten

Micheal O Conghaile

Danielle Picard

Mehmet Zaman Saclioglu 

Ingo Schulze

Roman Simic

What do we mean by small town? How has this innocuous term – one up from ‘village’, a couple down from ‘city’ – come to function as a pejorative? Pressed to describe what the phrase ‘small town’ conjures up, we’d be hard pushed to say anything positive: closed-minded; petty; provincial; parochial. On a broad European canvas, however, the rich traditions of short story writing challenge these preconceptions. The stories collected here are neither narrow-minded nor petty, nor do the minds of their protagonists contract to fit their environment. In Germany, a house-husband is slowly sent over the edge by his over-achieving neighbours. In the town of Odda in Norway, a middle-aged Morrissey fan has a matter of hours to find a girlfriend so his ailing mother can die in peace. It’s the small gestures – a white lie, the turning of a blind eye, a small kindness or a secret kept – that allow the characters of these communities to survive, to breathe easily within the seemingly tight strictures life there can impose. It’s how we do things round here...

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Mirja Unge

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