First Lines: Tawni O'Dell

Manuel Obrador knew that he was dead but understood he had not yet finished dying.

Fragile Beasts

Tawni O’Dell

First Lines: George Orwell

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

1984

George Orwell

First Lines: Ben Okri

In the beginning there was a river. The river became a road and the road branched out to the whole world. And because the road was once a river it was always hungry.

The Famished Road

Ben Okri

First Lines: Gina Ochsner

Olga had never been one for numbers, rarely thought in pictures, and couldn’t carry a tune to save her soul – had in fact been asked many times to not sing.

The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight

Gina Ochsner

First Lines: Téa Obreht

In my earliest memory, my grandfather is as bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers.

The Tiger’s Wife

Téa Obreht

First Lines: Joyce Carol Oates

One afternoon in September 1959 a young woman factory worker was walking home on the towpath of the Erie Barge Canal, east of the small city of Chautauqua Falls, when she began to notice that she was being followed, at a distance of about thirty feet, by a man in a panama hat.

The Gravedigger's Daughter

Joyce Carol Oates

First Lines: Flannery O'Connor

Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.

The Violent Bear it Away

Flannery O’Connor

First Lines: Amos Oz

I have been called a traitor many times in my life.

Panther in the Basement

Amos Oz

First Lines: Flannery O'Connor

Besides the neutral expression she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings.

Good Country People (from A Good Man is Hard to Find)

Flannery O’Connor

First Lines: George Orwell

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.

Animal Farm

George Orwell