‘The greatest ever short stories in English’? 

John Clegg from the London Review Bookshop has posted this list of his all-time top ten (with a cheating no.11) from the likes of nyrbclassics, penguinclassics, faberbook & melvillehouse. He admits it’s contentious, and that he has certain specific criteria (he’s not a fan of open-endedness, or minimalism, or anything whose page count means it’s in danger of straying into novella territory). Purely as a jumping-off point, then, we think it’s pretty terrific – and we’re eager to know which gems would make your cut. Anything from our two short story collections, Black Vodka by Deborah Levy (we’d put our money on the 2nd-person tour de force ‘Placing a Call’) and All the Lights by Clemens Meyer, in Katy Derbyshire’s wonderful translation? The former was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award 2012, while the latter was, according to the folks at guardian, one of 2011’s best short stories. 

Do you have anything specific you look for in short fiction, and is it different from what you expect to get from (or are willing to permit in) a novel?