The Last Copy
As soon as his book was published, Antonio realized that the pure vision of him that only she harbored would be shattered— and that he would do anything to keep her from reading it.
Fiction 2011
In This Issue
Note: We will be posting this issue in installments through July 27, 2011.
Stories
Sold
“I knew that all the things we’d gathered there so many years would be scattered and gone. All that had held it together would come apart and be gone as if it never was.”
Scars
"I don’t want any more surgeries. I just want a little art to help, to make it look a little less deformed. You know?”
Vigil
The old Bohemian hadn’t come to disturb the family on Holy Night, only to deliver an enormous, misshapen gift.
How to Win an Unwinnable War
His parents were separating, but all Sam could think about was preparing for nuclear holocaust.
Little Sister
Marla had felt she’d never really had a sister, that she’d been visited by some strange goblin or ghost. But then she went into Daddy’s bank vault after he died.
Someone I’d Like You to Meet
Veblen’s first desire had been to spring the news of her engagement on her mother. Nothing with her mother was ever simple and straightforward— and that was the thrill of it.
L’amour, CA
Isa couldn’t wait to leave the Philippines. But when we pull into an American town of foggy streets and gray, concrete houses, she looks confused, then panicked.
The Great Zero
All this—the dust, the tarantulas, the deaths—had not come naturally. “We’ve used the land wrong,” I once heard a farmer say while I spied on my father and his Communist friends.
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Subscribers can access PDF versions of every issue in The Atlantic archive. When you subscribe, you’ll not only enjoy all of The Atlantic’s writing, past and present; you’ll also be supporting a bright future for our journalism.Essays
Don’t Write What You Know
Why fiction’s narrative and emotional integrity will always transcend the literal truth
Do I Repeat Myself?
The problem of the "already said"
Gallery
Poetry
Twin Bill
Two poems
