Forty years after he first discovered it, Sebastian Barry explains why he loves James Joyce’s short story Eveline, then reads it for you, as part of our seasonal series of short stories selected by leading novelists
Zadie Smith shares why she loves this almost ‘anti-Italian’ story from Giuseppe Pontiggia, then reads the story, as part of our seasonal series of short stories selected by leading novelists
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie shares why she admires the ‘old-fashioned social realism’ of the Ghanaian writer’s No Sweetness Here, then reads the story, as part of our seasonal series of short stories selected by leading novelists
Neil Gaiman introduces Rudyard Kipling’s The Gardener, a melancholy tale from 1925, as part of our seasonal series of short stories selected by leading novelists. Afterwards, the story is read by actor Marion Bailey
You’ll never sleep in a twin bedroom again after hearing this classic Edwardian ghost story, selected by Penelope Lively and read by Simon Callow as part of our seasonal series of short stories selected by leading novelists
In this instalment of our seasonal short story special, we have Neil Gaiman share why he loves Kipling’s melancholy story, which is then read by actor Marion Bailey
Jorge Luis Borges’s combination of the anecdotal, philosophical and the literary showed Will Self how to achieve the ‘truly veridical’. He gets his coordinates from ‘On Exactitude in Science’
Charles Dickens celebrated Christmas throughout his writing life. His autobiographical story ‘A Christmas Tree’ is ‘almost Proustian’, says Simon Callow