Waking
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The Story of a Massacre
Mario Vargas Llosa
‘They spoke naturally - without any sense of guilt - and were intrigued and surprised that people had come from so far away, and that there was so much excitement, because of one little incident.’
The Border
Patrick Marnham
‘This impression was supplied simply by the knowledge that I was in El Salvador. This was not Mexico or Panama.’
A Day in the Life in El Salvador
Manlio Argueta
‘I have not failed you, José. I understand that you were saying goodbye when you opened your eye, and that, besides greeting me, you were expressing your pride in me, seeing me standing with my arm around the shoulders of your granddaughter.’
September 11, 1973
Joan Jara
‘Victor was due that morning to sing at the Technical University, at the opening of a special exhibition about the horrors of civil war and fascism where Allende was going to speak.’
The Country House
José Donoso
‘It was the season when unwholesome rumours were bred spontaneously, as life breeds in stagnant waters gone foul.’
Lance
Sheila Rowbotham
‘Lance worked as a mining engineer near Calcutta for twelve years under the British Raj, with the nationalist movement rumbling threateningly on the outskirts of their world of colonial privilege.’
Pan Lives
Russell Hoban
‘The child by the window is not thinking of the brevity of life, the child has as yet no idea of it.’
A Short History of Coronation Ale
Graham Swift
‘Rest assured, it was no ordinary ale that they drank by the Ouse while in Westminster crowds thronged.’
Greasy Lake
T. Coraghessan Boyle
‘I contemplated the car. It lay there like a wreck along the highway, like a steel sculpture left over from a vanished civilization.’
Pefkos
David Harsent
‘When he began to walk again, he was picturing himself sitting beside her in their usual bar, drinking a cold beer and smoking a cigarette.’
New York
James Wolcott
‘Shiny and bright and compact, 'Heartburn’ whirrs along, not so much a novel as an appliance - an appliance whose inner workings are on the fritz.’
Poland
Ronald Sukenick
‘Most of those released have trouble finding work, some have been suspended with seventy-five per cent pay, and others must now work freelance or get jobs writing for publications like technical journals.’
Editorial
Bill Buford
‘A new fiction seems to be emerging from America, and it is a fiction of a peculiar and haunting kind.’
The State of The State of Things
Michael Herr
‘It's appropriate to a film that is so much about film to pay tribute to the mythical incubator of the medium.’
Fragments of a Lament for Thelonious Monk
Russell Hoban
‘Always the slant rhyme with Thelonious, that was his Thelonious assault on the grey and civil devils of the ordinary. Walk tall and slanty, Thelonious; you live.’
Evensong
Todd McEwen
‘Characteristically my wife refused to be drawn into the situation while I became obsessed with it.’
War Reports from Poland
Marek Nowakowski
‘The familiar scenes floated by. Life renewing itself, the same from year to year.’
Claudia Cardinale is a Mexican Revolutionary
Duncan Bush
‘What average viewer, you ask? Who knows. Male, Caucasian, as they say.’
Rayme – A Memoir of the Seventies
Jayne Anne Phillips
‘This story could be about any one of those people, but it is about Rayme and comes to no conclusions.’
Rock Springs
Richard Ford
‘But as I read on a napkin once, between the idea and the act a whole kingdom lies. And I had a hard time with my acts, which were oftentimes offender's acts.’
Why I Love Country Music
Elizabeth Tallent
‘The harmonica player is left standing alone in the light, talking to himself. He cleans the spit from his instrument with a white handkerchief so old it is nearly transparent.’
Monster Deal
Frederick Barthelme
‘I'm about ready to go see what’s happening when they come in, each of them carrying a flamingo from the front yard.’
Still Life With Watermelon
Bobbie Ann Mason
‘When she saw a photograph of a cornucopia in a magazine, she imagined a huge watermelon stuck in its mouth.’
Sugar Daddy
Angela Carter
‘However unconsciously, as if that were an excuse, he’d prepared a potentially lethal bed for this daughter’s lover.’
Angela Carter about her father.
Moscow Women
Carola Hansson & Karin Lidén
‘She’s young, then suddenly she’s old, and she’s buried without knowing why she ever lived.’
El Salvador: An Aide-Mémoire
Carolyn Forché
‘It is my feeling that the twentieth-century human condition demands a poetry of witness.’
Money
Martin Amis
‘How did I get like this? It can’t just be the booze and all the junk food I put away. I must have been booked in for this a long time ago.’
Blow Your House Down
Pat Barker
‘There was a moment of complete silence, one of those inexplicable, simultaneous pauses in conversation that come over groups of people in a crowded room.’
Emma Bovary’s Eyes
Julian Barnes
‘Her eyes are black: passion and depth. Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy. Her eyes are brown: reliability and ordinariness. Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler.‘
Foreign Buddies
Ursula Bentley
‘She had to explain this, and the thought crossed her mind to dwell on this personal note, to put out a feeler to test Christina's reaction to the idea of sexual experiment.’
