Rose Zwi’s stories embrace people from different countries and cultures drawn together by a common humanity. Her characters range from a political activist who is house-arrested, to the child of immigrant parents caught between two cultures; from a city-educated woman returning to the arid homeland of her tribal grandfather, to a Rabbi and his wife in an East European shtetl; from a solitary...

Food as a passion, a gift, a means of revenge, even a source of power - these are the themes Bulbul Sharma explores in her collection of stories. Women weigh up the loss of a lover or the loss of weight; they consider whether hunger and the thought of higher things are inextricably linked; they feast and crave and die for their insatiable appetites.

An anomalous kiss. A white turtle ferrying the dreams of the dead. A working siesta in a five-star hotel. A woman’s twelve-metre hair trawling corpses from a river. Or a queue of longings in Darlinghurst. These enigmatic tales are stories of chance and hope. Alternately mythic, wistful or quirky, Merlinda Bobis’ tales resonate with an original and confident storytelling voice. Published as The...