10 of the best short story books and collections from the Booker Library

Crafting a compelling short story is a formidable task – it takes a special skill to create a world that instantly captivates readers within the confines of a compact literary form. ‘Short stories consume you faster,’ said the Booker Prize-nominated Ali Smith, the author of five short story collections. ‘They’re connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality.’

While the Booker Prize, which celebrates long-form or sustained fiction, isn’t open to short story collections as such, books of interconnected stories are eligible. And over the past 50 years or so, several works that have blurred the lines between novels and short stories have been nominated for the prize. 

For instance, the winner of the 1971 Booker Prize, In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul, features a series of linked travel vignettes with a novella at its heart. Impossible Object by Nicholas Mosley, which was shortlisted in 1969, featured eight connected stories, knitted together with introspective interludes. And as recently as 2019, the joint winner of the Booker Prize – Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo – connected the lives of 12 different women in a book described by the BBC’s Will Gompertz as ‘a collage of well-composed individual stories’. 

The International Booker Prize, by contrast, welcomes short story collections with open arms, alongside full-length novels. According to Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the prize, this is because ‘in some cultures short stories are a more dominant literary form than novels’.

Here, we showcase the best books of stories that have been nominated for our two prizes – including some that could also be described as novels. And while most of the stories listed here are short, they aren’t entirely sweet – from haunting tales of the supernatural to depictions of misfits on society’s fringes, they encompass everything from the absurd to the horrific.

White Nights by Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster

The debut short story collection from Polish author Urszula Honek, White Nights is a series of 13 interconnected stories that explore life and death (mostly death) from the point of view of villagers in the Beskid Niski region of southern Poland. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024, White Nights follows an array of narrators as they struggle with a variety of misfortunes and personal despair, always in search of hope. With a non-linear timeline with a poetic writing style, Honek memorably captures the bleakness of life on the margins. 

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell

Dark and macabre, Mariana Enríquez’s collection of haunting short stories was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021. Encompassing witchcraft, missing children and human heart fetishes, Enríquez’s stories are known for their nightmarish qualities, all the while highlighting the social and political problems of her home country, Argentina. ‘Each provocative tale elicits shudders and, often, repulsion,’ noted World Literature Today, stating that Enriquez ‘carves a space’ for ‘uncomfortable literature’.

The World Goes On by László Krasznahorkai, translated by Ottilie Mulzet, George Szirtes and John Batki

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2018, The World Goes On contains 21 deeply philosophical and enigmatic stories, traversing countries such as China, Italy and India, which delve into such topics as existentialism, time and fear. László Krasznahorkai, who is known for his very long sentences – sometimes several pages long – provides a bleak view of the world, which is no surprise given he was described by author Susan Sontag as ‘the contemporary Hungarian master of apocalypse.’ Originally translated from Hungarian, the book was praised by the Guardian as ‘a masterpiece of invention and utterly different from everything else.’

Jokes for the Gunmen by Mazen Maarouf, translated by Jonathan Wright

Translated from Arabic and longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2019, Jokes for the Gunmen contains 12 unique and bizarre stories, set within a war-torn country and primarily told from different children’s perspectives. They are stories that reveal the devastating truth of war – tragic, yet viewed through an absurdist lens. Here, a man turns cars into biscuits, and life is peppered with surreal mistakes and tragic accidents. Described by the Irish Times as ‘an unsettling collection that seeks to showcase loss in all its varied forms,’ Jokes for the Gunmen combines the unexpected with the ugly realities of life.

Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi, translated by Jeremy Tiang

Based on author Zou Jingzhi’s early life, during the Cultural Revolution in China, this series of vignettes explores his experiences and emotions as he seeks to make sense the chaos and tragedy occurring around him. As he moves from childhood to adolescence, and from Beijing to the countryside, Zou is forced to endure harsh conditions and backbreaking manual labour as he undergoes a ‘re-education through poverty’. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023, Ninth Building highlights the grim reality of the Cultural Revolution from the often-overlooked child’s perspective.