Strangers gathers fiction about exile, translation, intimacy, estrangement, and the fragile forms of recognition that arise between people from different worlds. Moving across languages, countries, and historical thresholds, these stories ask what it means to encounter another person–and sometimes to love them–without possessing them.
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“The author…strike[s] the same fruitful balance between familiarity and distance that Anton Chekhov often did… a stranger isn’t just someone you haven’t met.” – Lucas Shiller, L’Esprit Literary Review
READINGS FROM THE BOOK
Listen to Rebecca Ruth Gould read from “Tahdig,” for the journal Third Wednesday
Listen to Sophie Morris-Sheppard read “Speaking in Tongues,” at London School of Economics’ Space for Thought Literary Festival.
PODCASTS & INTERVIEWS
Listen to an interview about Strangers with Indirect Books (also on Substack).
REVIEWS
“Gould’s writing carries a distinctive strength: her passion is genuine, and her commitment to wounded nations is not merely rhetorical. She invests emotionally in places and their inhabitants, revealing a rare literary courage.” —Saleh Razzouk, The New World (al-Aalem al-Jadeed)
“Gould’s collection of stories is more theme and variations than suite or sonata.” —Lucas Shiller, L’Esprit Literary Review
