Valdir Peres, Juanito and Poloskei
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Lunch with the Surgeon
Kapka Kassabova
‘Last month, a plastic surgeon in Buenos Aires tried to seduce me.’
The Unwriteable
Mark Doty
‘When I was seventeen, a freshman in college living in my parents’ house, I met Ruth at a poetry reading.’
Tokyo Island
Natsuo Kirino
‘The lottery to choose her next husband was to take place at the Imperial Palace.’
Rousseau and the Pussycat
Marie Darrieussecq
‘I am aware that according to present-day criteria, the story I am about to tell contains several shocking scenes which fall within the realms of sexual harassment and cruelty towards animals.’
The Fig Tree and the Wasp
Brian Chikwava
‘The day I first saw the dance was the day we had expected to end with the execution of my maternal grandfather.’
Zeppelin
Herta Müller
‘This Zeppelin may not float high and silver in the sky, but it does set your mind adrift.’
Bianca Burning
C.K. Williams
‘The sexual terror lions are roaring into my ears as I make my way between their cages’
Four Mammals Contemplating Sex
Dave Eggers
Image 1 of 4 Bespectacled Bear, 12 January 2010, 4.51 p.m. Image 2 of 4...
Roseland
Rebecca Lenkiewicz
‘I’m twenty-one. On a Greyhound bus going from New York to San Francisco.’
This is for You
Emmanuel Carrère
‘I have a proposition for you. From this moment on, you will do everything I tell you to do.’
Park Life
Rupert Thomson
‘As the weeks went by, I began to realize that the park had its own unofficial and carefully calibrated infrastructure.’
The Agony of Intimacy
Jeanette Winterson
‘We all knew that about the gods – that they were total sex.’
Translating Sex
Natasha Wimmer & Ollie Brock
‘I won’t say that the mood of a scene doesn’t affect me, but I’m not the translating equivalent of a Method actor.’
Alive, Alive-Oh!
Diana Athill
‘She thought of herself as a rational woman, but while she could sleep alone in an empty house for night after night without worrying, there were other nights when her nerves twitched like a rabbit's at the least sound.’
Eight Pieces for the Left Hand
J. Robert Lennon
‘Autumn, once the most popular season in this town of tall trees, is now regarded with dread, thanks to the bitter athletic rivalry between our two local high schools.’
The Lives of Brian
Brian Cathcart
’ My name is Brian Cathcart. I grew up mainly in Northern Ireland. My father was headmaster of a secondary school and my mother taught English. I come from Protestant stock, though I have no religion myself. I studied history at university. I remember the Troubles starting, the war in Biafra, the Beatles.’
You Go When You Can No Longer Stay
Jackie Kay
‘It is not so much that we are splitting up that is really worrying me, it is the fact that she keeps quoting Martin Amis.’
The Surgery of Last Resort
Daniel Smith
’Early one morning in the fall of 1999, Steven R., a forty-seven-year-old man with fair skin and grey hair, was in the front yard of his home in suburban Nebraska, picking up leaves‘.
Good Father
David J. Spear
‘My father was up early. Everything was in place: his books in their bag; each prayer and reading marked; his shoes shined, his shirt and collar, his cassock and cope pressed.’
Tiger’s Ghost
Jennie Erdal
‘For nearly fifteen years I wrote hundreds of letters that weren't from me. They ranged from perfunctory thank-you notes and expressions of condolence, to extensive correspondence with the great and the good: politicians, newspaper editors, bishops, members of the House of Lords.’
Jennie Erdal on her time as a ghostwriter.
White Men’s Boats
Giles Foden
‘Deo Gratias stood on the deck of the Liemba with his prisoners at his feet. I leaned on the rail, studiously casual.’
Femme Fatale
T. Coraghessan Boyle
‘Looking back on it now, I don't think I was ever actually 'sex shy' (to use one of Prok's pet phrases), but I'll admit I was pretty naive when I first came to him, not to mention hopelessly dull and conventional.’
Put Not Thy Trust In Chariots
Jonathan Tel
'David had nothing against Arabs personally.This despite the fact he was religious (he wore a blue-and-white kippa which had been knitted by his wife, Devorah, as an engagement present.'
Protestant Boy
Geoffrey Beattie
‘I was going home to Belfast to visit my mother. It was the spring of 1998 and the weather was very good for that time of year.’
Problems for Adam and Eve
Jo McMillan
‘It is 1997, and this is the Adam and Eve, the first legal sex shop to open in China – housed here, in a state-run healthcare facility.’
