Explore Essays and memoir
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The Poem in the Pocket
Héctor Abad Faciolince
‘The note stated that it was by Borges, and I believed that, or at least I wanted to believe it.’
We Do Not Know Each Other
Lara Feigel
‘Is that what family is for? Helping you to understand what formed you?’
The Fall of Saigon
James Fenton
‘I wanted to see a communist victory, which I presumed to be inevitable. I wanted to see the fall of a city.’
Best Book of 1962: The Pumpkin Eater
Nicole Flattery
Nicole Flattery on why Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater is the best book of 1962.
The View from this End
Alexandra Fuller
‘It lay like a sodden comma, curled up against its mother, and no one realised it was dead.’
Lost Cat
Mary Gaitskill
‘Which deaths are tragic and which are not? Who decides what is big and what is little?’
Best Book of 1982: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
Beth Gardiner
Beth Gardiner on why volume one of Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series is the best book of 1982.
Exhale
Beth Gardiner
‘After all my travels, I can see now what I couldn’t when I started. In the suffering pollution brings, there is also the glimmer of a different future, its outlines visible through the haze.’
Laurent Gaudé | On Europe
Laurent Gaudé
‘Fervent social awareness and civic passion have deserted today’s Europe.’ Translated from the French by Alison Anderson.
Alicja Gescinska | On Europe
Alicja Gescinska
‘Europe has proved to be at its best when it embraced unity in diversity.’
The Imam and the Indian
Amitav Ghosh
‘We were both travelling, he and I: we were travelling in the West. The only difference was that I had actually been there, in person.’
Martin Goodman | Notes on Craft
Martin Goodman
Martin Goodman on why it took him twenty years to write his latest novel, J SS Bach.
