The best of: short story collections

It’s that time of year again when we all seem to have a little less time on our hands. Deadlines and commitments make it harder than ever to fit in regular leisure reading but short stories are a great solution to this. Quick, light reading is a great use of a study break and there are some amazing works to read that take up a lot less time to get through than your average novel. The choice is endless, so to help, I’ve chosen my top five favourite collections of short stories to have a look at this exam season.

The Persephone Book of Short Stories

Founded with the aim of foregrounding forgotten female authors of the 20th Century, Persephone celebrated their 100th anniversary by releasing a collection of thirty vignettes by twenty-eight different women. Each story provides a vivid insight into the daily lives of women from all walks of life. It claims that the titles span 1909-1986, but 19 out of 30 stories are from the 30s and 40s and only five are post-1950. All the stories included are unique and engaging, just perhaps not as diverse as they would have you believe.

Where Europe Begins by Yoko Tawada

“Just remember that you, too, like all other human beings, were once a monster in one of your previous lives.”

Published in 1989, Tawada wrote this eclectic mix of stories as a Japanese immigrant living in Germany. Her stories vary in length and style, some are abstract and others downright bizarre, but they are anything but boring. In this collection, the reader becomes the foreigner looking into blurred communities somewhere in between European and Asian culture. It can be as hard to understand Tawada’s work as it is to get hold of a copy, so make sure you’re prepared to wait for online delivery or just check out this bewildering work from the library.

A Parisian Affair and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant

“Why offend someone who had complete power over you? Such an attitude would smack more of temerity than courage.”

Writing from a low point in French history, Guy de Maupassant lived through revolution, war and invasion in 19th Century France. His stories are a visceral exploration of power dynamics, capitalist consumption and industrial abuse. Human vices are laid bare in his timeless prose that can speak to the reader even through 200 years of history. Every station in society is under Maupassant’s scrutiny, and his social critiques make wonderful fiction.

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu

“We spend our entire lives trying to tell stories about ourselves – they’re the essence of memory. It is how we make living in this unfeeling, accidental universe tolerable.”

Short stories tend to portray the intricacies and unpleasant actualities of real life, but in this 2016 collection, Ken Liu compiles an assortment of sci-fi and fantasy tales. World-building is his strong suit and all sorts of weird and wonderful settings are realised in these tales. However, relatability is not far off as Liu writes with an assured, profound understanding of the human condition. This collection is a fantastic alternative to the standard norm.

The Hidden Light of Objects by Mai Al-Nakib

“In quiet crevices, life is born over and over again, without witness, without recognition. It happens, feverishly or serenely, fast or slow, and the guardians or propriety remain laughably ignorant.”

There is a real honesty in Mai Al-Nakib’s series on the lives of citizens in the Middle East, an under-represented subject area to say the least. No detail is omitted in her pursuit of a true, unbiased account. Her understanding of the setting is her greatest strength: a Kuwaiti by birth, she walks you through her setting with the familiarity of someone showing you around their home. Her command of language is assertive and poetic. Her prose is so evocative you can practically smell the citrus trees, and it truly is a work that will leave you wanting more and more.

Even with the manic schedule of preparing for Term 3, you can make time for reading if you consider dipping into one of these collections when you have a spare minute. There’s no pressure to get to the last page of a thick book for answers with these bite-size stories but if you give them a go, you’ll find that they are just as enthralling and engaging as a full sized novel.