Short Stories Anthology (set stories)

The OxfordAQA International GCSE English Literature (9275) Short Stories Anthology is a curated selection of seven short stories from across the twentieth century, examined in Paper 2, Section B: Prose. The anthology brings together writers from Britain, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East, offering a rich variety of narrative voices, cultural settings and thematic concerns. The stories range from the domestic tensions of post-war England to the sun-drenched coming-of-age waters of the Mediterranean, and from the bomb-scarred landscapes of Blitz-era London to the rain-lashed Yorkshire hills.

This guide covers four of the seven set stories: The Fly in the Ointment by V.S. Pritchett, The Rain Horse by Ted Hughes, The Destructors by Graham Greene, and Through the Tunnel by Doris Lessing. The remaining three stories - Sandpiper by Ahdaf Soueif, A Real Durwan by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Mrs Vadnie Marlene Sevron by Jackie Kay - will be added in a future update.

Together, these stories explore how individuals negotiate power, identity, family loyalty and the passage from childhood to adulthood. They reward close reading of language, symbolism and narrative structure, and they pair naturally for comparison questions on shared themes such as parent-child relationships, nature as a hostile force, social class, and the interplay of destruction and renewal.