Explore Essays and memoir
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How to Write About Africa
Binyavanga Wainaina
‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’
Dreams for Hire
Gabriel García Márquez
‘The wave had erupted with such force that it obliterated the glass lobby.‘ Translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor.
The Imam and the Indian
Amitav Ghosh
‘We were both travelling, he and I: we were travelling in the West. The only difference was that I had actually been there, in person.’
Those Who Felt Differently
Ian Jack
‘Could grief for one woman have caused all this? We were told so.’
On the death of Diana.
Glitches
John Gregory Dunne
‘I prefer not to speculate about what might have happened if I had not taken the ECG.’
The Fall of Saigon
James Fenton
‘I wanted to see a communist victory, which I presumed to be inevitable. I wanted to see the fall of a city.’
The Snow in Ghana
Ryszard Kapuściński
‘We always carry it to foreign countries, all over the world, our pride and our powerlessness.’ Translated from the Polish by William Brand.
Lost Cat
Mary Gaitskill
‘Which deaths are tragic and which are not? Who decides what is big and what is little?’
The Zoo in Basel
John Berger
‘To create is to let take over something which did not exist before and is therefore new.’
Editing Vidia
Diana Athill
‘I thought so highly of Vidia’s writing and felt his presence on our list to be so important that I simply could not allow myself not to like him.’
His Roth
Philip Roth
‘I naively believed as a child that I would always have a father present, and the truth seems to be that I always will.’
The View from this End
Alexandra Fuller
‘It lay like a sodden comma, curled up against its mother, and no one realised it was dead.’
