Explore Essays and memoir
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Best Book of 2015: Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo
Valerie Miles
‘Time is a rubber band, and in a single sentence, ghosts and alternative worlds superimpose’
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.’
Shakespeare for Children
Sarah Moss
‘I can’t think, my mother said as we sat down, why people think a play that’s all about unsanctioned sexual desire is suitable for little girls.’
Shifting Ground
Una Mullally
‘Living in the only democratic country in the world with a constitutional ban on abortion, I felt an acute and visceral shame.’
Best Book of 2016: Joanne Kyger’s On Time
Hoa Nguyen
Hoa Nguyen on why Joanne Kyger’s On Time is the best book of 2016.
First Sentence: Mary O’Donoghue
Mary O’Donoghue
‘It’s the small stuff – and here I mean the odd particulate matter of daily life – that lets me access the sprawl of a place that wasn’t mine but has incrementally become so.’
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.
Republicans
James Pogue
‘This American says he’s heard of Cross but that he’s still just passing through.’ He laughed and formed the shape of a pistol with his right hand. ‘Well you heard that part, didn’t ya? That is one thing that will never change here.’
Best Book of 1950: A Natural History of Trees by Donald Culross Peattie
James Pogue
‘Now more than ever environmentalists need to remember what it’s like to write for that real world.’
The White Bloc
James Pogue
‘This election made clear that white people in this country have begun to vote how Southern whites always have: as a bloc.’
Why We’re Post-Fact
Peter Pomerantsev
‘We are living in a ‘post-fact’ or ‘post-truth’ world. Not merely a world where politicians and media lie – they have always lied – but one where they don’t care whether they tell the truth or not.’
Propagandalands
Peter Pomerantsev
From 2016: Peter Pomerantsev reports from Ukraine’s Donbas region.
