Explore Essays and memoir
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Best Book of 1891: The Birds of Manitoba
Sylvia Legris
‘During the pandemic, birds (along with many insects and wild plants) have landed in my life and poems again.’
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.’
Best Book of 1924: The Beggar
Bill Manhire
‘I still have, somewhere at the back of my head, the notion that there are real poets out there and that all the rest of us are just pretending.’
Best Book of 1941: Consider the Oyster by M.F.K. Fisher
Harriet Moore
‘This book is about yearning for the Sunday nights of childhood, or dreams; it is a meditation on hunger in all its forms.’
Best Book of 1952: The Palm-Wine Drinkard
Sandra Newman
Sandra Newman on why Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard is the best book of 1952.
Best book of 1964: Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
Lisa McInerney
‘In days of such human cruelty and pettiness and stupidity, we need reminding that we are all capable of savage compassion as well as the contagion of hatred.’
Best Book of 1965: Everything That Rises Must Converge
April Ayers Lawson
‘O’Conner has for me the effect of nailing and then blowing up one’s most casual illusions’
Best Book of 1978: Who Do You Think You Are?
Emily LaBarge
‘I have read them so often that sometimes I cannot remember what is mine and what is hers’
Best book of 1983: The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Sophie Mackintosh
‘After 2016 I’m done with sentimentality, and it’s hard to think of a less sentimental book than The Piano Teacher, objectively a masterpiece, subjectively a book that changed my life.’
Best Book of 1993: The Smell of Apples
Magogodi oaMphela Makhene
Magogodi oaMphela Makhene on Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples.
Best Book of 1998: 253
Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado on why Geoff Ryman’s 253 is the best book of 1998.
Best Book of 1998: Symbiotic Planet
Daisy Lafarge
‘Symbiogenesis is horizontal and anarchic, a frenzy of illicit fusions and mergers – energies coming together for mutual benefit.’
Daisy Lafarge on the best book of 1998.