Toby Litt | Interview
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Harmflesh
Margie Orford
‘This burning girl that I am with skin stretched white hot across unfair flesh. Harmflesh.’
Two Keiths and the Wrong Piano
Hanif Kureishi
‘My response to the music had reminded me that concealed inside myself was a more excitable and open self raring to get out.’
Letters from Prison
Basel Ghattas & Einat Weizman
Letters from Basel Ghattas, an Israeli-Arab member of parliament imprisoned for smuggling cell phones to Palestinian prisoners.
The Nature of Man
Alan Rossi
‘Viewed from above, the traffic was reflective as water, cars moving in wavelike shimmers over the surface of the freeway.’
Objects in Mirror
Maxim Osipov
‘He runs through the events of the day in his mind. Fairly frightening, really: the sudden request for his file, the question about the government. And the silence.’
Confessions of a White Vampire
Jeremy Narby
‘Many of the people I was living with considered me a white vampire, who killed to extract human fat.’ Jeremy Narby on the Amazonian myth of the white vampire.
First Course
Zoe Tennant
‘Indigenous chefs will tell you that their dishes are Indigenous, not Canadian. With the plate, these chefs demonstrate that the food is the land, and that the land is still theirs.’ Zoe Tennant on Indigenous cuisines.
Ten Thousand Feet
Ariana Harwicz
‘I go up and watch the avenue through the window. Noise and more noise. An avenue of insects, stray bullets and snipers sprawled on the rooftops.’
Charlotte Collins | Notes on Craft
Charlotte Collins
Charlotte Collins on the craft of translation. ‘Literary translators don’t just translate the ‘meaning’ of a text; we translate the feel of it.’
My Biggest Insecurity About the Garden
Caoilinn Hughes
‘Pathos is suffering. But is it suffering to realize a dream, however puny?’ New fiction by Caoilinn Hughes.
Three Poems
Miyó Vestrini
‘It was fake that your hugs were convulsive / and your furies unpredictable.’ Translated by Cassandra Gillig and Anne Boyer.
When We Returned to Pakistan
Bina Shah
Bina Shah on growing up in Pakistan. ‘Culture shock was what they called it in those days, but to me it felt like a kidnapping.’
Imperium
Ryszard Kapuściński
Ryszard Kapuściński, once the only foreign correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, on the concept of borders.
Diana Athill
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood on Diana Athill. ‘Diana was admired by all who knew her, and also by all who read her memoirs, for her honesty, her plain but elegant style, her lack of pretenses, and her stoicism in the face of ever-narrowing possibilities.’
Two Poems
Jana Prikryl
‘his balance / between person and / abstraction’s so stirring I want no other token for anything can happen’
Nostalgia in Blue
Viviana Peretti & Caroline Brothers
‘To step inside Viviana Peretti’s camera obscura is to witness the very process by which memory is made.’
Bitter Tennis
Lucy Ives
‘I don’t know much about the cosmos, but I know enough to avoid the game of tennis.’
Hungerwinter and Liberation
Jan Vegter
Jan Vegter’s remarkable visual and written record of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, translated from the Dutch by Theo de Feyter.
Postpartum
Geeta Tewari
‘I put the breast milk in the fridge and lie down on the bed. I pretend I am dead, underneath the earth with a bag of Cheetos.’
If You Start Breathing
Thea Lim
‘Sharing her pain with other people meant that her pain belonged to her less, Joanne belonged to her less.’
Portion of Jam
Mazen Maarouf
‘My father no longer goes to the hospital to work, because you don’t find nurses in wheelchairs working in hospitals.’
Best Book of 1949: The Thief’s Journal
Holly Pester
‘To read it is to feel the alternative tempo in the rude repetitions of the thief who loves to steal.’
The Best Book of 1943: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Kathryn Scanlan
Kathryn Scanlan on the best book of 1943: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles.
Best Book of 1921: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Will Harris
‘I wanted to understand the world and why it hurt, and soon I stumbled on the Tractatus’ Will Harris on the best book of 1921.
Best Book of 1966: Season of Migration to the North
Ayşegül Savaş
‘Of course, literature cannot be separated from its flesh of language and form. Nor can its tangible subject explain why it moves its reader, through the subtleties of language, or the shadowy geographies that it leaves to the imagination.’
Best Book of 1999: Ai’s Vice
Jillian Weise
‘I love Ai’s work because it gives me permission and reminds me that poetry invented fiction. I needed that in 1999 and I need it today.’
Best Book of 1947: Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson
Chris Power
Chris Power on the Best Book of 1947: Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson.
Best Book of 1935: Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi
Naben Ruthnum
Naben Ruthnum on the best book of 1935: Junichiro Tanizaki's The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi.
Best Book of 1934: Bruno Schulz’s Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy cynamonowe)
David Hayden
David Hayden on why Bruno Schulz’s Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy cynamonowe) is the best book of 1934.
Best Book of 2011: Kingdom Animalia
Nell Boeschenstein
‘As the title suggests, this is a book about the family of animals, the family of man, and the family of family.’
