Explore Essays and memoir
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Summer with my Grandmother
A.L. Kennedy
‘And this was my grandmother, this man-destroying tyrant, this magnificent perfectionist with untireable arms and unfathomable ways of seeing.’
Cruising
Kamran Nazeer
‘Over samosas and pakoras and three different kinds of green chilli chutney, she spoke to us about politics.’
Children of The Wind
Primo Levi
‘Today Kaenunu is largely deserted. On Mahui, on the other hand, it is not unusual for anyone with patience and good vision to catch sight of some atoula.’
In Romania
William McPherson
‘The images of the Romanian revolution – I had seen it on television in Berlin – were still vivid in my mind.’
Blitzed Beijing
Robert Macfarlane
‘It’s at night that you really notice the dust, because artificial light suddenly makes the fines visible.’
Saturday Night and Tuesday Morning
Nicola Monaghan
‘It was the middle of summer and a group of us were out on the town in Nottingham City Centre.’
Insomnia
A.L. Kennedy
‘After dinner and schoolwork and dog-walking and the rest, even if I’d put the light out and laid myself down for definite rest, little ideas and scraps and nonsenses would tickle in and start to shake me. They would make the nights too bright to resist.’
Notes from Uzbekistan
Chinelo Okparanta
‘The cultural presentations of the students – that juxtaposition of old and new world, of tradition and modernity.’
A Bizarre Courtship
Ben Okri
‘One morning, more golden than yellow, I went outside to our housefront and saw that the beggars had gone.‘
Chocolate Empires
Andrew Martin
‘Q: When is a factory not a factory? A: When it’s a chocolate factory.’
