Explore Essays and memoir
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Wendell Steavenson
‘I don’t know how to think about this. How to stretch compassion for one person into a million.’ Wendell Steavenson on Europe’s migrant-refugee crisis.
The Fencing Master
David Treuer
David Treuer on learning to fence with Maître Michel Sebastiani and learning to write with Toni Morrison.
Introduction: No Man’s Land
Sigrid Rausing
‘We tangle and project, in exile; we make it up as we go along.’
Propagandalands
Peter Pomerantsev
From 2016: Peter Pomerantsev reports from Ukraine’s Donbas region.
First Sentence: Mika Taylor
Mika Taylor
‘I didn’t want reality to overwrite the story that was forming in my head.’
Love in the Graveyards of Industry
Jeremy Seabrook
‘Love was no longer encoded in recognised behaviours, but became subject to private desires and idiosyncratic needs.’
Best Book of 1901: The Octopus
Rob Magnuson Smith
Rob Magnuson Smith on why Frank Norris' The Octopus is the best book of 1901.
Best Book of 1955: Pedro Páramo
Louise Stern
Louise Stern on why Pedro Páramo is the best book of 1955.
Bad Luck, Britain
Fredrik Sjöberg
‘It was a wonderful day of high summer in the Stockholm archipelago.’
Introduction: What Have We Done
Sigrid Rausing
‘There is an apocalyptic feeling in the air. I write the day after the news that the IS have blown up parts of the ancient site of Palmyra.’
Budapest 2015
Wojciech Tochman
‘To the delight of the little kids, who had seen a good deal of killing in their lives, a middle-aged man blew soap bubbles.’
