Our Private Estate
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Amateur Dramatics
Jonathan Lee
‘I heard the news from a nurse with a piece of tinsel tied around her waist: my father had become a hypochondriac.’
The Diplomat’s Daughter
Chanelle Benz
‘Natalia used to be a wife. His name was Erik. His name was Viggo. His name was Christien. His name was Lucas. His name was Nils.’
The Second Night is Ending
Mikail Eldin
‘This winter and this forest will leave you with a shiver in your heart, which will appear whenever you see a winter forest, even in pictures.’
Justin Jin | Interview
Justin Jin & Francisco Vilhena
‘This disaster has been going on for decades. I want to protest against this as loudly as I can through photography.’
This Is Not A Test
Stuart Evers
‘In the end, because he loved her still, still so very much, he let her win.’
Ninth and Race
Dan Burt
‘Prostitution, gambling, fencing, contract murder, loan-sharking, political corruption and crime of every sort were the daily trade in Philadelphia’s Tenderloin, the oldest part of town.’
How We Got Mother Back
Valério Romão
‘With the passing of time we got used to hearing our brother being our mother.’
Sea Bean
Tim Fitts
‘Fred was the type whose worldview gazed through a shadow of things that could go wrong, like most of the South Philly lifers.’
Patrick French | First Sentence
Patrick French
‘In Edwardian days, if you were growing up in England (though Maurice was from Ireland) your life was regimented.’
This July
Wiam El-Tamami
‘It felt as though time would fall off a cliff on Sunday. We jokingly called it The End of the World.’
What It’s Like
Anya Yurchyshyn
‘I’d been telling myself I would get there and get through it. I’d been telling myself I was doing the right thing, that no one could escape doing this thing and that was why the thing was right, not wrong.’
A.L. Kennedy | First Sentence
A.L. Kennedy
‘I have never seen anyone eat figs in the street and feel I am unsurprised.’
After Silk Road
Mike Power
‘The Dark Web is a shadow internet, an unindexed, unseen and lawless corner of cyberspace.’
Mess
Romesh Gunesekera
‘You have to go on the offensive until you smell victory. Then you have the aphrodisiac and can go full tilt.’
Crow Fair
Thomas McGuane
‘You’re in a different world when your own mother doesn’t recognize you, or thinks you’re the stranger who gave her a hickey.’
Opening Invocation
Jean-Paul de Dadelsen
‘Or otherwise, leaving the shore of the intermediate sea, / has it been a while since they’ve gone ahead / into the interior of lands of the spirit?’
Zone of Absolute Discomfort
Justin Jin
‘The icy hinterland is wretched to live in, but just hospitable enough to allow for the extraction of billions of tons of resources trapped beneath the ground.’
1979
Aminatta Forna
‘What happened in 1979 has happened many times before and many times since, in places where people have set themselves free and believed with all their hearts that the freedom they had fought for was real and lasting, only to be recaptured.’
A Sparrow Fallen
Dave Heath
‘a sparrow fallen; / blackness of pain shimmering / hard in soft white light’
Revelations
Ange Mlinko
‘I think of this when raising my eyes / to a filigreed cross in a sanctuary‘’
After the War
Patrick French
‘My antipathy to military culture started early and it wasn't helped by living in a garrison town.’
Yiyun Li | First Sentence
Yiyun Li
‘But for her, and perhaps for many, the solidity of an invented life is not trustworthy.’
Lindsey Hilsum | Podcast
Lindsey Hilsum & Rachael Allen
Lindsey Hilsum on Libya, her time in Rwanda and how countries can repair in the aftermath of war.
Selvy After the War
Frances Harrison
‘She exudes happiness. Somewhere along the line she understood that this was the best way to defeat the men who tortured her.’
Ange Mlinko | First Sentence
Ange Mlinko
‘I rediscovered the efficacy of meter (or the ‘contrast between fixity and flux’) when I was stuck in a shark tunnel with my kids and was afraid I was coming down with a panic attack.’
Interview: Laurence Hamburger
Laurence Hamburger & Rachael Allen
Frozen Chicken Train Wreck is a book of reproduced tabloid posters from daily newspapers – The...
World War II Has Never Ended
Michael W. Clune
‘I discovered Hitler the summer I turned twelve. I found him in the centre of a map in a computer game called Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I destroyed him with a bomb.’
