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Best Book of 2008: The Alphabet

Rae Armantrout

Rae Armantrout on why Ron Silliman's The Alphabet is the best book of 2008.

Best Story of 1965: ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’

Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender on why Flannery O’Connor's ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge’ is the best story of 1965.

Best Book of 2006: The Re-Emergence of Global Finance

Oliver Bullough

Oliver Bullough on why Gary Burn's The Re-Emergence of Global Finance is the best book of 2006.

Night Watch

Tim Dee

‘A nightjar is a dusty carpet whose pattern has absorbed into it every tread.’

Five Parties

Ned Beauman

‘The second year, I noticed before anyone else that the Coelophysis was trying to escape.’

Lady Neptune

Ann Beattie

‘The word money popped up like a bit of the ocean’s detritus riding in on a wave, but her lips formed the words ‘Merry Christmas’.’

About the Cover

Stanley Donwood

‘I took myself off to the woods, the fragments of the great forests that once spread over our continent.’

Lessons

Diana Athill

‘My two valuable lessons are: avoid romanticism and abhor possessiveness.’

Two Poems

Rae Armantrout

‘My long career / in explaining / my career.’

Saving Mesopotamia

Alexandra Lucas Coelho

‘What they are excavating is the birth of a civilisation.’

The Intoxicated Years

Mariana Enríquez

‘They cried as if they weren’t to blame for any of it. We hated innocent people.’

Robertus Heimric, Welcome Back

Upamanyu Chatterjee

‘He was the one survivor who remembered nothing.’

Fatima Bhutto on the Refugee Crisis

Fatima Bhutto

‘In a connected world, how can anyone close their doors?’

First Sentence: Molly Brodak

Molly Brodak

‘A name is a single small token of selfhood issued at birth, upon which all the rest of one’s person must be built.’