Explore Essays and memoir
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The Day After Trump Won
Leslie Jamison
‘I feel afraid, and I do not know what to make of yesterday’s belief. I can see that belief like an object shimmering underwater, a kind of relic.’
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.’
The Fairytale
Jennifer Kabat
‘In Hollin Hills, we believed our flatware could change the world.’ Jennifer Kabat on the intersection of modernist architecture and espionage.
Mother and Father
Thomas Kilroy
‘Like most wars, this was a war of the young.’ Thomas Kilroy on his parents’ experience of the Anglo-Irish War and the Irish civil war.
Hell and Night
Noelle Kocot-Tomblin
‘The implication of Iago’s silence is that there is no hope for his redemption’ Noelle Kocot-Tomblin on ‘Othello’.
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’
All that Offers a Happy Ending Is a Fairy Tale
Yiyun Li
‘If you were like me, you would know the obsession of the compulsive reader: every street sign; every bottle label’
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 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.’
