A neurotic, twice-divorced sci-fi writer moves back in with his mother to solve his personal problems.

16-year-old Gary Black is an average football player, budding wordsmith and reluctant hero. Gary helps his local Australian Rules football team win the local championship by accident, but celebrations turn to violence when Gary's Aboriginal best friend, Dumby Red is denied the "Best and Fairest" medal because of the racism of local officials.

A med school burnout returns to his small home town, but when he decides against telling his mother that he dropped out, complications ensue.

Kwon returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori, who has come back from Japan to propose to her. Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology.

Apu and his family have moved away from the country to live in the bustling holy city of Benares. As he progresses from wide-eyed child to intellectually curious teenager, eventually studying in Kolkata, we witness his academic and moral education, as well as the growing complexity of his relationship with his mother.

Ken, a WWII GI, returns home after he's paralyzed in battle. Residing in the paraplegic ward of a veteran's hospital and embittered by his condition, he refuses to see his fiancée and sinks into a solitary world of hatred and hostility. Head physician, Dr. Brock cajoles the withdrawn Ken into the life of the ward, where fellow patients Norm, Leo and Angel begin to pull him out of his spiritual dilemma.

On a fishing boat at sea, a 60-year old man has been raising a girl since she was a child. It is agreed that they will get married on her 17th birthday. They live a quiet and secluded life, renting the boat to day fishermen and practicing strange divination rites. Their life changes when a teenage student comes aboard.

Set in the year 2005, Chrysanthemum is ready to leave New York City but must first relieve any doubts or anxieties with her best friend Esperanza. They have a lot to talk about and some gifts to share before they part ways.

Shin-ae moves to her recently late husband’s hometown. Despite her efforts to settle in this unfamiliar and too-normal place, she finds that she can’t fit in. After a sudden tragedy, Shin-ae turns to Christianity to relieve her pain, but when even this is not permitted, she wages a war against God.

Simon Henderson is at boarding school in Canada while his father works in Hong Kong, and his mother lives in England. When his parents visit him in the holidays, Simon discovers that his mother has schizophrenia.

A view of the end-of-the-century Mexican family. A father who comes back home after a long absence, but who would rather be somewhere else. A daughter suffering from a trapped pain. A son full of guilt and recriminations. A little kid who soaks up all the tension in the house, like a sponge, and a self-effacing mother who would like to go away and leave everything behind.

The year 2000. Maya, a young Londoner, goes to the small village of her Spanish girlfriend, Ruth, who has just died in an accident. She wants to say goodbye, but the shock and anxiety of presenting herself as the “foreign girlfriend” to family and friends she doesn't know and who speak a different language, is compounded by the perplexity of discovering that nobody knows who she is.