Explore Essays and memoir
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Chromium
Primo Levi
‘Life is full of customs whose roots can no longer be traced ... but in any event, why were pig's feet obligatory with lentils, and cheese on macaroni?’
The Lord in his Wisdom
Jackie Kay
‘I realize with a fresh horror that Jonathan is seeing me as the sin’
Lagos Must Prosper
Alexis Okeowo
21 million people, $91 billion GDP, an ambitious governor whose term is up: Alexis Okeowo on the megacity of Lagos
My Father’s Life
Leonard Michaels
‘Six days a week he rose early, dressed, ate breakfast alone, put on his hat, and walked to his barbershop at 207 Henry Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, about half a mile from our apartment.’
The Writing of ‘Or Shall We Die?’
Ian McEwan
‘There was too the challenge, as I saw it, of writing a singable English, simple and clear, that could express public themes without pomposity and private feelings without bathos.’
An Escape from Kampala
Wycliffe Kato
‘‘Be brave,’ she said, ‘pull yourself together. What you are about to see is worse than you ever imagined.’ She asked if I knew what Winston Churchill had called Uganda. He had called it the pearl of Africa.’
Watching the Rain in Galicia
Gabriel García Márquez
‘Only then did I understand where my grandmother had got that credulity which allowed her to live in a supernatural world in which everything was possible and where rational explanations were totally lacking in validity.’
Maud Newton | Portrait of My Father
Maud Newton
‘Exactly how long the prostitute, unbeknownst to my father, stayed at our house and slept in my bed is hard to gauge.’
Lessons from a Hustler
Peter Mountford
‘With Buck, pool was clearly an intellectual exercise and he was scarily cool at the table.’
Portrait of My Father
Jon McGregor
‘He must have taken thousands of services in that time, but this still feels like the holiest thing he’s ever done.‘
