"The Shelter of the World"

"The Shelter of the World"
by Salman Rushdie

Rating: 7.9



Short story about Emperor Akbar the Great and his imaginary wife. Emperor Akbar the Great, of Sikri, had succumbed to fantasy. Queens floated within his palaces like ghosts, yet one of these royal personages didn’t really exist.

As for the Emperor, he never again referred to himself in the singular in the presence of another person. He was plural in the eyes of the world, plural even in the judgment of the woman who loved him, and plural he would remain. He had learned his lesson. ♦

"Free Radicals"

"Free Radicals"
by Alice Munro

Rating: 6.4



Short story about a widow visited by an intruder. Writer describes the widow, Nita, living alone in the weeks after the death of her husband, Rich, a college professor. He’d been eighty-one years old and in fine health.

“Was he hurt?”
“Killed. Instantly. Serves him right.”
There followed a kindly stern lecture. Leaving keys in the car. Woman living alone. These days you never know.
Never know. ♦

"Friendly Fire"

"Friendly Fire"
by Tessa Hadley

Rating: 8.2



Short story about a British woman, Shelley, whose son, Anthony, is fighting in Afghanistan. Shelley was helping out her friend Pam. Pam had her own cleaning business. She’d been hired to clean an industrial warehouse. Shelley had agreed to go along; it was a few weeks before Christmas.

They sat there for a few minutes, too tired to move, giving the car time to recover, talking about their Christmas shopping, who they’d bought for, what they still had to get. More than half the short winter’s day had passed while they were in the warehouse. The sky was a blue so pale that it was almost no color; wooded bluffs loomed above them, beyond the industrial estate, marking the edge of the city. The sun had dropped behind the bluffs already, so that the tops of the bare trees showed up finely spiky, like hair or fur, against a yellow glow of light from somewhere out of sight. While they waited, their breath began to fog up the car windows. ♦