The Report
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Nell Freudenberger | God and Me
Nell Freudenberger
‘When I was seven, I sat down to draw God. God wore a pirate shirt, purple harem pants and a red fez.’
The Many Voices of Africa
John Ryle
‘This is worth remembering: if it were not for Africa we would not be here at all.’
The Master
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
‘The Master was a little crazy; he had spent too many years reading books overseas’
The War of the Ears
Moses Isegawa
‘It was a victory to arrive home. Ma Beeda always celebrated with a strong cup of tea.’
Passport Control
Kwame Dawes
‘I am Ghanaian. This is my legal label. I was born there. It is my inheritance.’
Gifted
Segun Afolabi
‘The boys' eyes grazed the carpet and then each other guiltily. The youngest tried not to smile with shame.’
Legacies
Adewale Maja-Pearce
‘When I was ten years old, my father hit my mother so hard that she suffered permanent damage to her right ear.’
Beethoven Was One Sixteenth Black
Nadine Gordimer
‘Once there were blacks wanting to be white. Now there are whites wanting to be black.’
The Witch’s Dog
Helon Habila
‘The old witch, Nana Mudo, lived alone with her dog on the other side of the grove.’
Policeman to the World
Daniel Bergner
‘The UN's shiny red and white SUVs were too conspicuous, and the entire Liberian police force had three vehicles’
Antediluvian
John Biguenet
‘To the inexperienced, hurricane stories always sound like exaggerations.’
Motley Notes
Ian Jack
‘Generalisations about the national psyche – supposing there is one – must always be treated with suspicion.’
Ian Jack on the eve of the 7/7 bombings.
Wish You Were Here
Simon Gray
‘From contemptuous wit to unfathomable pain, the centre always held, Alan was always there.’
When Skateboards Will Be Free
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
‘My mother and father believe that the United States is destined one day to be engulfed in a socialist revolution.’
The Visiting Child
Karen E. Bender
‘Jane needed a stranger in the kitchen, someone to speak because she could not.’
Family Pictures
Liz Jobey & Robin Grierson
‘Photography always reveals truths about the relationship between the photographer and the person being photographed.’
The Great Wall
Ismail Kadare
‘What China loses by the sword it retakes by silk.’
A short story by Ismail Kadare, translated by David Bellos.
White Sands
Geoff Dyer
‘Now that we were out of danger it seemed possible that there had never been any danger.’
The Ship at Anchor
Frederic Tuten
‘Those words made me wonder why I ever wanted to be an artist, why I ever wanted to live, though I never thought I wanted to die.’
Return to Akenfield
Craig Taylor
‘Akenfield did not bow to sentimental ideas of the countryside as idyll’
The Seventh Event
Richard Powers
‘Think of mitosis as trillions of slightly near-sighted, plagiarizing students’
Waiting for Salmon
Barry Lopez
‘The world, we too often forget, has no investment or interest in the triumph of Homo sapiens’
Airds Moss
Kathleen Jamie
‘It could almost have been Neolithic, an ancient and mysterious earthworks.’
Fantastic Mr Fox
Tim Adams
‘He told the police officer that he was a vegan and the next morning a little slit in the prison door opened, with his breakfast: a metal tray on which there were three frozen potatoes.’
Tim Adams on the fox hunting ban in Granta 90: Country Life.
When Grandmama Was Young
Matthew Reisz
‘They touched on some of the crucial questions about sex we are still struggling with.’
The Death of a Chair
Doris Lessing
‘To attack the chair I equipped myself with a saw, sharp scissors and a claw hammer.’
Constitutional
Helen Simpson
‘The thing about a circular walk is that you end up where you started.’
