‘For one instant, while all this seemed possible, he listened to the violent unfolding of his heart.’
Odoyevsky—once Georgiy, like the noble armour-clad saint slaying the dragon on Moscow’s coat of arms, now simply George, pronounced nasally, in the French manner—was striding through Paris on a March evening in 1927. Chilly rain washed over the darkening city, turning his footsteps watery and …
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘Things that aren’t done right away are never done.’
‘There was to be an exhibition. There were lots of pictures like his, apparently – of waiters, pastry cooks, valets, bellboys.’
A story by Tom Crewe.
‘I never asked myself if I loved P. But nothing could have kept me from going to make love with him at the Hôtel Casanova.’
Memoir by Annie Ernaux, translated by Alison L. Strayer.
‘Just follow me, she had said, you do nothing but what I tell you to.’
An extract from Yiyun Li’s new novel.
‘Even when I travel as far as India, you are with me and I am re-entering our cellar.’
Memoir by the poet Pascale Petit.
‘I saw cuts, burns, broken limbs, heart attacks, and then, what's inside the human body.’
