At The Kitchen Table
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The Lepers of Moyo
Paul Theroux
‘Boarding the train in the African darkness just before dawn was like climbing into the body of a huge, dusty monster'.
An Amateur Spy In Arabia
Norman Lewis
‘In the 1930s I wanted to travel and I wanted to write. In 1935, I published my first book—about a journey to Spain’.
The Separate World of Seaports
James Hamilton-Paterson & Alex Majoli
‘I am aged eight or nine, on a family outing by Thames water bus in London’.
Nothing But Ghosts
Judith Hermann
‘Afterwards Ellen liked to say she had once been to America but couldn't remember it very well.‘
Arguing With The Dead
Dan Jacobson
‘My childhood was spent in Kimberley, the diamond-mining town in South Africa.In those years most of the mines were no longer being worked’.
Startled In The Dark
Ryszard Kapuscinski
‘Morning and dusk are by far the best times of day in Africa. The sun is scorching, but these times allow you to live.'
Little Sister
Anne Enright
‘The year I'm talking about, the year my sister left (or whatever you choose to call it), I was twenty-one and she was seventeen’.
After the Crash
Richard Lloyd Parry
‘To travel around Java at this time was to experience a little of what it might have felt like to be a foreign tourist after the collapse of the mark in Weimar Germany.’
Richard Lloyd Parry on the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis in Indonesia.
My Frozen Father
Deborah Levy
‘Three grown-up children visit the country they were born in for the first time in twenty-three years’.
The Life and Death of a Homosexual
Pierre Clastres
‘There was no sweetness in the air that day: the corpse gave off a terrible stench’.
Sandpiper
Ahdaf Soueif
‘Outside, there is a path. A path of beaten white stone bordered by a white wall–low, but not low enough for me to see over it from here'.
Unspeakable Rituals
Paul Theroux
‘Whenever people ask me about travel I always suspect they are buttonholing me, eager to relate amazing adventures of their own’.
In Between Talking about The Elephant
Jackie Kay
‘I discover some rough skin on her elbow. I run my tongue along it’.
Northern Soul
Simon Armitage
‘I live on the border, between two states. I've lived here all my life, just about, and I know this place like the back of my hand’.
God’s Country
Luc Sante
‘About forty per cent of Americans describe themselves as 'born again', a designation that covers a great many separate creeds, even, these days, a certain strain of Roman Catholicism.‘
The Scrimshaw Violin
Jonathan Levi
‘Madeleine Gordon was not much of a Jew. She was a Starbuck, the daughter of whalers, pirates and other not-so-genteel Semitophobes of Nantucket’.
A Child’s Book of Death and Dying
Abraham Verghese
‘A fine morning mist had rolled down over Addis Ababa from the Entoto mountains, leaving a sheen on the lawn between the apartment buildings'.
The Mermaid
Julia Blackburn
‘The man was still there poised in indecision and staring at the thing which lay heaped at his feet.’
Everything Is Different in Your House
Adam Mars-Jones
‘At the end of the year, an ambulance brought Suseela home from hospital to die’.
Story of a Heel
Todd McEwen
‘ My stunningly crummy apartment–there were big holes in the walls and I lay awake nights worrying about how they got there’.
My First European
Edmund White
‘I belong to the last generation of Americans obsessed with Europe and intimidated by it.’
A Soap Opera From Hell
Clive Sinclair
‘It comes as no surprise when an ophthalmist informs him that the tears he does produce–the consequence of various allergies–are deficient, poor-quality facsimiles of the real thing.’
Knowing French
Julian Barnes
‘We still miss Miss Winstanley very much. She was a lovely lady, and certainly the life and soul of the party around Pilcher House during her time here.‘
African Renaissance
Nelson Mandela
In the distant days of antiquity, a Roman sentenced this African city to death: Carthago...
Fifteen Lashes
Anwar Iqbal
‘I was an apprentice newspaper reporter when General Zia ul-Haq came to power in Pakistan in the military coup of 1977.’
The Silent Majority of Cape Town
William Finnegan
‘Next to Mandela sat Allan Boesak, the ANC candidate for premier of the Western Cape province. Great is thy faithfulness, indeed, I thought.’
Scotland’s Last Great Artefact
Stephen Gill
'In December 1964, the Cunard Line placed its order for the ship that turned out to be the last great transatlantic liner'.
The Seventh Man
Haruki Murakami
‘I looked up at the sky. A few grey cotton chunks of cloud hung there, motionless.’
Where Does Writing Come From?
Richard Ford
‘Occasionally if pushed or annoyed I'll come right out and say it: I make these little buggers up, that's what. So sue me’.
