I had never heard of the little Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. And yet, that’s where it all began. With an ordinary incident, one that happens frequently, but so frequently that it finally started something unstoppable.
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‘You spend your life swallowing insults.’
I had never heard of the little Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. And yet, that’s where it all began. With an ordinary incident, one that happens frequently, but so frequently that it finally started something unstoppable.
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‘We meet at various points in the great swathes of the past that neither of us were alive to witness.’
Allen Bratton on a daytrip to a castle with his older boyfriend.
‘Listening to three white poets, whom I suspect are academics, talk about the state of poetry.’
Oluwaseun Olayiwola eavesdrops on an older generation.
‘I’d been dubious about his company at first.’
Sarah Moss on watching Shakespeare with her twelve-year-old son.
‘She didn’t trust us because, to her, tenants were like children.’
Kate Zambreno on negotiating with her older landlady.
‘A moment now swallowed in embarrassment, I asked a question only a young person might ask an older one.’
Lynne Tillman on trying to understand what makes a generation.
Tahar Ben Jelloun is the author of several novels including, The Sacred Night, which received the Prix Goncourt in 1987. His most recent novel is The Rising of the Ashes. He lives in Paris.
More about the author →‘He inspected the chest where the snakes slept. There was the viper, quiet, in a deep sleep.’
‘How far can one deviate from the accepted pieties before one is kicked out?’
Brandon Taylor on naturalism and the future of fiction.
‘I want the reader to be conscious of reading and not being just drawn into the book and forgetting themselves and forgetting their life.’
Claire-Louise Bennett on her novel Checkout 19.
‘Fiction, even if it’s completely made up, does say something about how you experience reality.’
Mary Gaitskill talks about her book The Devil’s Treasure.
‘A world without Updike signifies literary climate change: his was the air we breathed.’
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