It is 23 December, some time in the future, and a storm rages outside the house. Inside there are supplies and an expectant mother sleeps. Is it safe to venture out and fetch her gift?
In this post-apocalyptic story the novelist and short story writer Sarah Hall (The Electric Michaelangelo, Burntcoat) imagines a mysterious landscape ravaged by weather: is it still Christmas, when the world seems to have stopped?
Warning: contains scenes that younger listeners may find disturbing.
Read by Emma Haslett.
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You can read the text version here. This article was published in the New Statesman in 2014.
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[See also: Karl Ove Knausgaard: a personal manifesto on the art of fiction]
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