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Explore Essays and memoir

Aftermath

Peregrine Hodson

‘We have to find a way to balance life with memory.’

A Play on David Rakoff

A.M. Homes

‘He was rare and singular.’

Bucharest, Broken City

Philip Ó Ceallaigh

‘It is only consciousness and memory that hold together the things we sometimes see as solid.’

Coventry

Rachel Cusk

‘War is a narrative: it might almost be said to embody the narrative principle itself.’

Fairbourne

Adam Weymouth

‘Climate change, I realise, is already here. Not the drama of it, not yet, but in the mundane.’

The Secret Afterlife of Boats

Anna Badkhen

‘The sea is broken,’ they say. An empty net at night: a drooping lattice of shiny nothingness, a cold and worthless tinsel mesh.

Spirit Animals

Darrell Hartman

From The Revenant through Jurassic Park and Godzilla, Darrell Hartman traces the evolving meaning of megafauna in popular culture.

The Tree Farm

Cal Flyn

‘I was going north to find a tree farm, in a land where there are no trees.’

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 2000: The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent

Will Boast

Will Boast on why Lionel Trilling’s The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent is the best book of 2000.

Best Book of 1998: 253

Carmen Maria Machado

Carmen Maria Machado on why Geoff Ryman’s 253 is the best book of 1998.

Best Story of 1992: ‘Mlle. Dias de Corta’

Mary O’Donoghue

Mary O’Donoghue on why Mavis Gallant‘s ‘Mlle. Dias de Corta’ is the best story of 1992.