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Explore Essays and memoir

A Night in the Engadine

John Kaag

John Kaag, author of Hiking with Nietzsche, camps out in the mountains of the Engadine where Nietzsche wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Best Book of 1900: The Autobiography of Dr William Henry Johnson

Jennifer Kabat

‘Johnson is now a ghost of history; he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, but I can’t let him disappear.’

The Fairytale

Jennifer Kabat

‘In Hollin Hills, we believed our flatware could change the world.’ Jennifer Kabat on the intersection of modernist architecture and espionage.

Ghostlands

Jennifer Kabat

Jennifer Kabat on the Anti-Rent War, one of the earliest moments of rural populism in the US, and something few know about outside the Catskill Mountains.

Stuck in Trees (with Apologies to Ian Frazier)

Jessica Francis Kane

‘On 8 January 2018, I noticed a large bunch of purple balloons in a tree near my apartment building.’

First Cut

Jonathan Kaplan

‘I grew up with the expectation that I would serve.’

On the Refugee Crisis

Gazmend Kapllani

‘Europe, my love. You have such a long history; and oftentimes such a short memory.’

Driving in Greater Noida

Deepti Kapoor

‘Greater Noida is a paranoid, fractured land.’

I come from a place on your bucket list

Deepti Kapoor

Deepti Kapoor on travel, authenticity and the peculiarity of being Indian in Uganda.

Letter From Pondicherry, India

Akash Kapur

‘When I was growing up in Pondicherry, a former French colony on the south-east coast of India, I would go with my family each Sunday to the beach.‘

The Snow in Ghana

Ryszard Kapuściński

‘We always carry it to foreign countries, all over the world, our pride and our powerlessness.’ Translated from the Polish by William Brand.

Christmas Eve in Uganda

Ryszard Kapuściński

‘In fact, from the moment I spotted Amin, I made a point of neither accelerating nor slowing down – no turning or stopping.’

Outline For A Book

Ryszard Kapuściński

‘I have come home from Africa, jumping from a tropical roasting-pit and dropping into a snow-bank.’

Stiff

Ryszard Kapuściński

‘On the flatbed lies a coffin. Atop the black box is a garland of haggard angels.’