Explore Essays and memoir
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The Editor’s Chair: On Svetlana Alexievich
Jacques Testard
‘It is clear when reading Svetlana Alexievich that she has a deep empathy for the characters whose stories she tells.’
Souvankham Thammavongsa | Notes on Craft
Souvankham Thammavongsa
‘When I look at a word, I can see the thing inside it. The ear inside heart.’
The Canvas Bag
Inigo Thomas
‘It was given to her by her Japanese captors after the Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942 to pack the few possessions she was allowed to take with her to prison.’
20/20
Tatyana Tolstaya
'I didn't start out a writer, and had no plans of becoming one.' Tatyana Tolstaya, translated from the Russian by Anya Migdal
Root and Branch
Sana Valiulina
‘I am my father’s daughter, a former prisoner of war and “suspicious person” who spent ten years in the Gulag.’ Translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon.
Five are the fingers, and five are the sins
Rebecca Watson
Rebecca Watson on the life of the man who prototyped fascism, the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio
Best Book of 2012: Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell, by Katherine Angel
Rebecca Watson
Rebecca Watson on the best book of 2012: Unmastered, by Katherine Angel.
Best Book of 1999: Ai’s Vice
Jillian Weise
‘I love Ai’s work because it gives me permission and reminds me that poetry invented fiction. I needed that in 1999 and I need it today.’
Common Cyborg
Jillian Weise
‘I’m nervous at night when I take off my leg. I wait until the last moment before sleep to un-tech because I am a woman who lives alone’
Kings of the Yukon
Adam Weymouth
An extract from Adam Weymouth’s Kings of the Yukon, winner of the Sunday Times / Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award in association with the University of Warwick
