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An Education
Ariel Saramandi
‘Once, early on, before he learned such things were never said, my brother approached a white boy in his class with my mother’s maiden name and said they must be cousins. The violence in my family’s home started a year or so later.’
The Flowers Look More Beautiful Now Than Ever
Mieko Kawakami
‘It’s hard to imagine a country where a lockdown would function perfectly, but in the case of Japan, which lacks basic individualism, the current situation has bred insidious hatred and division.’
The Covid-19 Pandemic
Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall on animal welfare, the long history of zoonotic diseases and what we must learn from Covid-19.
Commuting Through Coronavirus
Kikuko Tsumura
‘My friend and her colleagues are being told not to get infected. Infections among employees will affect the company’s reputation, and would be an inconvenience to clients.’
Notes on Craft
Naoise Dolan
‘If something is usually done in novels, but I can’t actively justify doing it, then I don’t do it.’
The Kobold
Daisy Hildyard
‘In a plain material sense the condition of being alive is that of living inside this contradiction – being membrane-bound.’
Trees, Disease
Philip Marsden
‘The greatest problem with the recent enthusiasm for tree-planting is disease. Large-scale projects mean large-scale movement of tree stock, which in turn has helped spread a number of highly contagious arboreal pathogens.’
Notes on Craft
Alan Rossi
‘The whole universe emerges and lives through this little consciousness that we call our self.’
Qualities of Earth
Rebecca May Johnson
‘Allotment earth is like the cache on a public computer, it holds too much information.’
I Remember
Georges Perec
Entries from Georges Perec’s I Remember, translated from the French by Philip Terry and David Bellos.
