{"id":21803,"date":"2026-06-02T14:50:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T12:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/?p=21803"},"modified":"2026-06-10T18:39:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T16:39:46","slug":"the-national-short-story-prize-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/2026\/06\/02\/the-national-short-story-prize-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"The National Short Story Prize 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This volume is the second collection in what would later become the BBC Short Story Award, an initiative designed to showcase the richness and diversity of the short story form by publishing five outstanding British stories each year.
The 2007 winner, The Orphan and the Mob<\/em> by Julian Gough, is a wonderfully absurd and hilarious tale. A seemingly trivial decision\u2014not going to the toilet in the morning\u2014sets off a chain of increasingly disastrous events that culminates in the deaths of two brothers and the destruction of an orphanage. It is a brilliant and entertaining illustration of the butterfly effect.
In Slog’s Dad<\/em>, David Almond tells the moving story of a boy mourning the loss of his father, who had promised to return after death. Blending grief with a child’s hope and imagination, the story is both poignant and touching.
Jonathan Falla’s The Morena<\/em> follows a young housemaid and her child in San Salvador. Working for a self-important pension owner, she dreams of a different future while navigating the violence and social tensions that surround her daily life.
How to Get Away with Suicide<\/em> by Jackie Kay centres on Malcolm, a man devastated after losing his wife and children to another man. Determined to end his life, he becomes preoccupied with finding a way to do so that will not be recognised as suicide.
Finally, Hanif Kureishi’s Weddings and Beheadings<\/em> is a darkly ironic story about a cameraman who films executions for a living and discusses his work with the same casual professionalism one might expect from a wedding videographer.
I fully agree with the judges’ choice of winner. The Orphan and the Mob<\/em> stands out not only for its inventive premise but also for its lively, engaging style. It was by far the story I enjoyed most in this collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The alternative was to relieve myself into my breeches where I sat.
My waistband creaked under the terrible pressure.
With the gravest reluctance, I willed the loosening of my urethral sphincter.
Nothing happened. My subsequent efforts, over the next few minutes, to void my bladder, resulted only in the vigorous exercising of my superficial abdominal muscles. At length, I realized that there was a default setting in my subconscious which was firmly barred against public voidance, and to which my conscious mind had no access.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content<\/strong>
Slog’s Dad – David Almond
The Morena – Jonathan Falla
The Orphan and The Mob – Julian Gough
How to Get Away with Suicide – Jackie Kay
Weddings and Beheadings – Hanif Kureishi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This volume is the second collection in what would later become the BBC Short Story Award, an initiative designed to showcase the richness and diversity of the short story form by publishing five outstanding British stories each year.The 2007 winner, The Orphan and the Mob by Julian Gough, is a wonderfully absurd and hilarious tale. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21806,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[291,293],"tags":[133,47,51],"class_list":["post-21803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2026","category-challenge-riquiqui-2026","tag-derision","tag-humour","tag-identity"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ales-krivec-j_4PnZ0BCo4-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1705&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21803"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21823,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21803\/revisions\/21823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}