Welcome to issue 113. Our first story takes us to the period under Franco when all of Spain was forced to speak Spanish. It was punishable by law to speak a regional language such as Catalan or Basque, but of course people continued to speak in their regional tongue surreptitiously. In Moira McCavana’s No Spanish, the father of a family in the Basque Country decides that the family must now only speak Basque. The problem:  their language has always been Spanish.

Jumping to Western Herzegovia in the 90s, Bergita Bugarija’s Untouched gives us a glimpse of an American teen on a visit to her ancestral country where the youth culture is dramatically different from her own.

From the U.S., The Driver by Marco Kaye presents an ex-alcoholic salesman as he travels to a Walmart sales conference in Arkansas where his Uber driver becomes entangled in his life in a most curious way.

And from Daniel Ditty we have Susquehanna River, 1980, where a neglected young boy is pulled awake by his beer-fueled father and the father’s friend to go on a boat trip where the drinking continues.

These four stories will transport you to different times and places that pop with local atmosphere, from the small moldering farmhouse in the hills of the Basque country to the turbo-folk of Herzegovina to the claustrophobia of an Uber and a small boat reeking of beer. They are a pure delight to read, so jump in.

In our picks from back issues—two masters of gritty realism. We have Daniel Woodrell’s Two Things  and Donald Ray Pollock’s Pills. If you have read these stories, they are fun to reread, and if you haven’t read them, you must. They’re classics.

The quiz this issue is Totalitarianism and Fascism in Literature. Answer correctly and you’re in the running to win a 30-euro (or equivalent) gift certificate from Amazon. For answers to last issue’s quiz, Serial Killers in Literature click here. Our winner for that quiz is Keith McCallister.

Our book reviews this issue are America, América by Greg Grandin and The Continental Divide, a collection of short fiction by Bob Johnson, both highly recommended.

Our next issue is due out around December 2025. To be notified when new issues are available, just follow one of the social media links in the column to the right or email us to subscribe (gratis, of course).

Jill Adams, editor
Michael Garry Smout, tech and design
assistant editors: Bergita Bugarija and Diggory Dunn

Readers: Bergita Bugarija, Diggory Dunn, Milena Nigam, Sam Simon and Elizabeth Wittenberg 

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