Introduction -- Nineteen Fifty-five / by Alice Walker, USA -- The Circle / by Tatyana Tolstaya, Russia -- The Jewess / by Irene Dische, Germany -- The Fun-fair / by Hanan Al Shaykh, Lebanon -- A Wilderness Station / by Alice Munro, Canada -- Comrades / by Nadine Gordimer, South Africa -- An Unfinished Record / by Zhang Jie, China -- Too Much Rain, or, the Assault of the Mold Spores / by Ellen Gilchrist, USA -- Woman Hollering Creek / by Sandra Cisneros, Mexico -- Jacob: the Story of a Faith-healing Priest / by Bessie Head, Botswana -- Cream Sauce / by Mary Flanagan, USA -- Newlywed / by Banana Yoshimoto, Japan -- Games at Twilight / by Anita Desai, India -- Two Words / by Isabel Allende, Peru -- Before / by Annie Saumont, France -- A Wife's Story / by Bharati Mukherjee, India -- Little Lewis Has Had a Lovely Sleep / by Elizabeth Jolley, Australia -- Distant View of a Minaret / by Alifa Rifaat, Egypt -- Hairball / by Margaret Atwood, Canada -- Blue Water-man / by Luisa Valenzuela, Argentina -- The Reservoir / by Janet Frame, New Zealand -- Fat People / by Alison Lurie, USA -- Perpetual Spinach / by Shena Mackay, UK -- Broken Transformers / by Bi Shumin, China -- Tuataras / by Barbara Anderson, New Zealand -- You're Ugly, Too / by Lorrie Moore, USA -- The Burial / by Armonia Somers, Uruguay -- Heavy Weather / by Helen Simpson, UK -- In the Family / by Maria Elena Llano, Cuba -- A Gift from Somewhere / by Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghana -- The Bloody Chamber / by Angela Carter, UK -- The Snow Thief / by Melanie Rae Thon, USA -- The Violin / by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Russia -- Acknowledgments.