Gurnaik Johal is the author of the short story collection We Move and novel Saraswati. In this blog, he shares his top five short stories that have inspired his craft, in conjunction with his upcoming Short Story Round Table workshop – taking place at The Albany on Tuesday 14 October 2025.
1. Pet Milk, Stuart Dybek
This is the short story I’ve reread the most times. Each time I revisit it, a new detail stands out. It slips from present to past effortlessly, and in transporting the narrator back in time, really moves the reader.
2. Lu, Reshaping, Madeleine Thien
This is another amorphous story that reads differently each time I revisit it. Thien has a knack for description and characterisation – this is a great example of the short story as a character study.
3. Extra, Yiyun Li
This was the story that made me a lover of short stories. There’s such a depth of empathy for all characters here, and Granny Lin, the main character has stuck with me for years.
4. Recitatif, Toni Morrison
Morrison’s only short story is sometimes understood mainly by its central gimmick, that the reader never knows which race the two main characters are. But there’s much more than that experiment here – it feels more timely now as political division forces issues to become more black-and-white.
5. Rainbows, Joseph O’Neill
O’Neill is a great comic writer and, with a background in law, is fantastic when writing about moral dilemmas. The problem at the centre of this story cuts across class and race really well.
Images 1-3, 5: The New Yorker. Image 4: Chatto & Windus
Published: Thursday 9 October 2025.