Explore Essays and memoir
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Doris Lessing | A London View
Doris Lessing
‘No one driving along it could possibly guess the truth.’
Double Vision: The ‘Other’ Twin Towers
Christopher Merrill
‘Two pairs of towers celebrating economic might, two visions of modernity: a double-sided mirror of the international order.’
Dr J
Kalpana Narayanan
‘My father has his own language for everything. When I finished my MFA, I was a NINJA: No Income, No Job, No Assets.’
Dreams for Hire
Gabriel García Márquez
‘The wave had erupted with such force that it obliterated the glass lobby.‘ Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor.
Early Retirement
John Lanchester
‘My father used to tell the story of a tutor at his university, a Viennese professor of something or other.’
Eight Arms to Hold You
Hanif Kureishi
‘One day at school–an all-boys comprehensive on the border between London and Kent–our music teacher told us that John Lennon and Paul McCartney didn't actually write those famous Beatles songs we loved so much.'
El Salvador | Snapshot
Horacio Castellanos Moya
‘Don’t mind the sun that beats leadenly down, or the light that stings their eyes, or the danger that lurks nearby, because that’s what life has always been: a little air gulped down amid the crowd.’
Empathy and the New Refugee Crisis
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson
‘What does it take to remind people that you are human?’
Erotic Politicians and Mullahs
Hanif Kureishi
‘Strangely, anti-British remarks made me feel patriotic, though I only felt patriotic when I was away from England.’
Essex
Norman Lewis
‘Essex is the ugliest county. I only went there to be able to work in peace and quiet and get away from the settlers from London south of the river.’
