Strangers at the Port : From one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists

Giulia is ten. She lives on the greenest island in a volcanic archipelago. She has never left.

Her best friend, beside her older sister, Giovanna, is a donkey.

She ties ribbons around his head and thinks she will marry him when the time comes.

The sisters' days on the island are shaped by ritual, community, superstition and isolation.

It is a place that feels stuck in time: verdant, plentiful, peaceful.

Until the men arrive.

And a foreign yacht anchors at the port.

And the vines begin to fail.

And everything changes.