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.

Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi 

Winner of the International Booker Prize 2025, Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq is a powerful collection of 12 short stories, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi.

‘My stories are about women – how religion, society, and politics demand unquestioning obedience from them, and in doing so, inflict inhumane cruelty upon them, turning them into mere subordinates,’ Mushtaq said in an interview with the Booker Prizes.

Including a range of female perspectives – from tough, stoic mothers to opinionated grandmothers and resilient children – Heart Lamp captures the everyday lives of women and girls in Muslim communities in southern India.

Mushtaq, an Indian activist and lawyer, wrote the stories between 1990 and 2023, with Bhasthi choosing the 12 stories in Heart Lamp from around 50 contained in Mushtaq’s six short-story collections. Heart Lamp is the first book-length translation of Mushtaq’s work into English.

The judges of the International Booker Prize 2025 described the novel as ‘a radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes. It challenges and expands our understanding of translation.’

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur 

Translated from Korean by Anton Hur, this genre-busting and blackly comic collection by Bora Chung was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022. A set of 10 stories that will leave readers feeling distinctly uneasy, Cursed Bunny explores contemporary themes such as greed, misogyny and capitalism – and gives them a ghastly twist. From disembodied heads emerging from toilet bowls to foxes that bleed pure gold, Chung’s stories pack a visceral punch, conjuring up mental images that can be hard to shift. ‘These are not childhood bedtime stories, but morality tales,’ the Chicago Review of Books noted in its review, describing Cursed Bunny as a ‘collection that reminds us there are monsters everywhere, even in plain sight.’

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. 

Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated by Tiffany Tsao

Longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022, Happy Stories, Mostly contains 12 queer-focused short stories, which, contrary to the book’s title, are often far from ‘happy’. Instead, they tackle emotionally heavy themes including belonging, faith, grief and loss. In one story, a grieving mother travels to Vietnam after the death of her son; in another, an employee starts a job in a department of Heaven that’s devoted to archiving unanswered prayers. This melancholic collection, translated from Indonesian, was described by the International Booker Prize judges as ranging ‘from the heart-wrenching to the absurd, creating a vibrant mosaic of contemporary Indonesia’. 

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’.

Faces on the Tip of My Tongue by Emmanuelle Pagano, translated by Sophie Lewis and Jennifer Higgins

Set in rural France, Faces on the Tip of My Tongue follows a cast of eccentric characters within a small community. It’s a collection of 13 linked, first-person short stories which explore themes of love, loss and loneliness, and revolves around a group of individuals – from a mysterious wedding guest to a particularly skillful hitchhiker – who exist on the outskirts of society. Intriguingly, the English-language translation is much shorter than the French original, with Peirene Press, the publisher behind the English version, devoted to works of under 200 pages that can be read ‘in the same time it takes to watch a film’. The collection was longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022.

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.’

If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You contains eight interconnected stories, drawn from the author’s own experiences, and follows a Jamaican family attempting to build a life in America. From the 1970s to the 2008 recession, it charts the experiences of parents Topper and Sanya and their sons Delano and Trelawny, who have emigrated from Kingston to avoid the political turmoil of their home country. Told through the perspectives of each family member, the book reveals them to be struggling to thrive in Miami as they deal with racism, homelessness and identity crises. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023, If I Survive You is perhaps best described as a novel in stories, blending humour with tragedy as Escoffery’s characters attempt to find their place in the world.

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.

I Live in the Slums by Can Xue, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping

Described by Harvard Review as ‘the Lady Gaga of modern Chinese literature,’ Can Xue is well known for her avant-garde and experimental fiction. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2021, I Live in the Slums is no exception – a collection of 16 dreamlike stories that turn convention upside down. Narrated by a gallery of human and animal characters, these stories combine aspects of Chinese philosophy with Western thinking. There is a rat that questions his reality and the idea of existentialism, and a group of people who become literal shadows. These eccentric stories defy typical narrative structure – and logic – to provide a wholly unexpected reading experience. 

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.