Procreate, Generate

The Seventh Man

The Fruit of My Woman

George Saunders In Conversation | Podcast

Whale Fall

Private: Diane Williams In Conversation | Podcast

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Savage Winds

Bao Ninh

'The war was almost over. On the other side of the plain, the enemy artillery base lay silent; no reconnaissance plane had yet appeared on the horizon.'

Upriver

Redmond O’Hanlon

'"As far as I can see," announced Lary, "every law of nature is suspended in this goddamn country."'

Gnossienne

‘Let me make it clear that I never attend literary conferences. I know that they're held in art deco hotels close to legendary museums; that sessions on the future of the novel are conducted with camaraderie, brio and bonhomie.’

Never Saw Brazil

William Boyd

‘On one of the sunniest of bright May mornings, Senator Dom Liceu Maximiliano Lobo needlessly ran his comb through his neat goatee and ordered his chauffeur to pull into the side of the road.’

The Shore

Richard Ford

'Our relationship, in fact, hasn't seemed to need more attention to theme or direction but has proceeded or at least persisted on autopilot, like a small plane flying out over a peaceful ocean with no one exactly in command.'

The Hole

Romesh Gunesekera

'I let the tears roll down to the sides of my mouth, and licked them to harden my insides. I wanted to cry gushingly, but I couldn't.'

Hemingway in Cuba

Norman Lewis

'I met Ian Fleming at Cape's annual party. Jonathan Cape made no secret of disliking Fleming, had read only the first chapter of Casino Royale and nothing whatever of his subsequent books.'

Shanghai Express

Germaine Greer

'The next dawn broke over an immense stony plain where billions of blue, pink and white plastic bags bobbed like so many tethered pearly balloons.'

Golden Kids Comeback

Timothy Garton Ash

'Hips. Some never have them. Most have them but lose them. A few have them and keep them.'

Rich Rich Rich

Richard Rayner

’I was sweating, I was faint. The yellow on the walls was brilliant and burning.‘

The Trouble with Money

Ian Hamilton

‘Did you know that a hundred-gram jar of Nescafe filled with 1p coins buys two packets of Benson and Hedges?’

Ten Money Notes

Kevin Jackson

‘Despite money's protean nature, however, a lot of people persist in believing that it should stay much the same and are dismayed when it doesn't.’

The Psychology of Money

James Buchan

’In my inferno of solitude, I thought there must be some reason why I was doing what I was doing.‘

Bad Land

Jonathan Raban

‘What the bottom line always comes to is the old two a.m. cry: We can’t go on living like this.’

My Low Korean Master

Chang-rae Lee

’I wondered, too, whether he was suffering inside, whether he sometimes cried, as I did, for reasons unknown.‘

Fat

Helen Epstein

‘Fat Aids has become so common in Uganda, he told us, that if you say you are working on HIV people think you are a thief.’

False Accounting

Nuruddin Farah

‘That's what money does to one: makes one suspicious.’

Playing the Game: The City

David Kynaston

‘It is not a question of how he came to grief, ‘but did he play the game?’’

Playing the Game: The Takeover

Will Hutton

‘The first defender of Hanson-esque capitalism is the Conservative Party.’

Memories of a Union Man

Sam Toperoff

‘It was not a graceful matter, making public your desire to have more money.’

Creatures of the Earth

John McGahern

‘They alone among all the creatures of the earth would never have to go that way.’

Ghost Story

Seamus Deane

‘The children were never seen again.’

Author, Author

Martin Amis

‘Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing.’

The Spelling Bee

Neil Steinberg

‘Jacob spells ‘idiosyncratically’ and nods at the ‘That is correct,’ as if to say, ‘Damn right that is correct, lady.’’

Trap. Dominate. Fuck.

Julian Barnes

‘Sceptics maintain that live chess is as enthralling as watching paint dry. Ultra-sceptics reply: unfair to paint'.

Never Let Me Down

Susan J. Miller

‘The statement was the truth of him–not only what he said, but also the fact that he would say it to us, and say it without guilt, without apology, without regret'.

The Up Escalator

Bret Easton Ellis

‘I'm standing on the balcony of Martin's apartment in Westwood, holding a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and Martin comes towards me, rushes at me, and with both hands pushes me off the balcony'.

Fiction by Bret Easton Ellis.

Buddy Carmody

Jayne Anne Phillips

‘No one was safe walking to church in the dark, but Buddy knew better than to beg not to go'.

Patricide

Beverly Lowry

‘By now, the shooting is old news, and Rush Springs, Oklahoma, has had its five minutes of notoriety’, Beverly Lowry in 'Patricide'

The Tragedy of Vukovar

David Owen

’The three month siege of Vukovar, in the autumn of 1991, when an average of 5,000 shells a day landed on the city, set a pattern for events in the former Yugoslavia.’

The Fall of Vukovar

Jean Hatzfeld

'Jean Hatzfeld returned to the former Yugoslavia and was severely wounded by gunfire in June 1992'.

Hero of Tiananmen Square

Orville Schell

‘The spring of 1989 was so apocalyptic that at the time it had seemed unthinkable that the year's events would fade or that China would ever be able to forget them.'

Progress in Prague

Ivan Klíma

‘People in the West are aware of the hardship and bewilderment that accompanied the political and economic transformation of central and eastern Europe after 1989.'

Dick Contino’s Blues

James Ellroy

‘June 22, 1958. Dig, hepcats: it’s me, five minutes after the fuzz told me my mother had been murdered.’

Hard Man

Hugh Collins

‘My da, I say, is the famous Wullie Collins. He's the Robin Hood of Scotland. He takes from the rich and gives money to the poor. My da’s a bank robber.’

Blind Rage

Henry John Reid

‘I was born in Dundee on 3 April 1951, of a mother who was not meant to bear more children and a father who had long before disappeared.’