To get a circumcision in Italy is a major operation. For example, if you are born in the General Clinic in Bologna, the gynecologist will not do it. You have to go to Florence. The Italians are a type who if

I first saw Karolina outside the Sumesa on the corner of Avenidas Oaxaca and Álvaro Obregón. She was smoking a stubby cigarette, a sled-like backpack hitched to her shoulders. I stopped short, felt my heart lurch. Could it be? Karolina was my brother’s ex-wife; they’d divorced five years ago, in Seattle, and I’d not seen her since. Right before their divorce, she had gone missing for fifteen days, an event still marked by dread and shame. The second time I saw her was by the bus stop on Avenida Michoacán. The third sighting was in Parque México, late at night. I had decided to walk back from a work dinner in Roma Sur to the hotel because I was having trouble sleeping and a long walk before bed—tracing the park’s serpentine paths, imagining the alertness being drained from my body one step at a time—seemed like a preemptive strike against insomnia. The dog run was empty except for a young man throwing a tennis ball for a German shepherd. The owner was wearing sunglasses, despite the hour. I was just past the run, in the thick green center of the park, when I came upon Karolina asleep on a bench, squeezing her giant backpack like a lover. 

After George had gone off into the alcove, Mana stayed in the living room for another hour before she could bring herself to go to bed. She was too tired to do anything, and remained sitting at the table, staring in front of her. 

When there was a silence, Raimar's mother turned back to the mirror again. Raimar went to his bedroom with Philip. The atmosphere had grown tense. Raimar’s mother had been speaking for about an hour. In fact it was more like wailing.

The winter had set in earlier than usual. It was the beginning of November and already wet snow was scudding about, driven along by a storm. Sometimes it seemed as though the wind, rising after a breathing space, would smash the row of low houses and scatter their remains.

Cora was mad. Someone had stolen her yellowish underpants.

Before I had even gone away, I started polishing San Francisco as if it were a pair of glasses to look through and every new thing dust and dandruff; so the day of the farewell party gleamed and curved the world

On 5.8.42, Lieutenant General Paulus, now in command of Sixth Army, approached Stalingrad in obedience to the directives of Operation Blue, or Blau as I should say, for blue is merely any 

At midnight, Harper exits the dining room of the Old Faithful Inn and greets the distant geysers with a loud, resonant fart-take that, all ye fire-breathing monsters!-then breaks into a run across the steamy

I stopped smoking, it was McClaid. From hyperventilation. Take one step you’re wafted on top of the shrubbery. You lose your hands and feet, then your head just bounces away. Except with McClaid