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Javier Montes on Emilio Fraia
Javier Montes
‘Fraia sets himself the most difficult and respectable task a writer can face: unveiling the mystery without revealing the secret.’
The Story of a Variation
Milan Kundera
‘I have often heard it said that the novel has already exhausted all its possibilities. I have the opposite impression: that in four hundred years of existence the novel has missed many of its opportunities: it has left many great opportunities unexploited, many roads forgotten, many calls unheard.’
Airports: Frontier Nations
Andrés Neuman
‘1.In the waiting area of the Málaga airport for departing flights, a flock of birds nests on the beams. They fly back and forth across the high ceiling.’
Paris or Prague?
Milan Kundera
‘May in Paris was an explosion of revolutionary lyricism. The Prague Spring was the explosion of post-revolutionary scepticism.’
Letter from Gaza
Hisham Matar
‘It is difficult not to see the assassination of Ghassan Kanafani as an attempt to obliterate the Palestinian narrative.’
Gandhi the Londoner
Sam Miller
‘On 29 September 1888, an Indian teenager with a mild case of ringworm and a fine head of hair sailed into the Thames Estuary.’ Sam Miller on Ghandi's time in London.
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.‘
Vanishing Virgil
Maaza Mengiste
‘We want to believe that we will die with dignity; that death is a confrontation and the battle is somewhat fair.’
Deeper into the Heart of Borneo (Part II)
Redmond O’Hanlon
‘James, resplendent in leopard skin and hornbill feathers, looked even more solemn than is his habit.’
Murderer in the Family (Part Two)
Rian Malan
‘It's not just their skins that are white; their minds are white, too. They are generic whites with western values.’
Where is Thy Sting-a-Ling-a-Ling?
James Lasdun
‘The fire department didn't have a tall enough ladder to reach his body.’
