Explore Essays and memoir
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Best Book of 1886: The Masterpiece
Summer Brennan
‘Zola’s characters are, in every sense of the term, art monsters.’
The Second Career of Michael Riegels
Oliver Bullough
‘The new law was technical and complicated, but created something genuinely new: the international business company, a hyper-deregulated shell corporation.’
Oliver Bullough investigates the history of shell companies in the British Virgin Islands.
Notes on Craft
Amina Cain
‘I would rather work in front of, or behind, a story. I want to leave a chain of images that remain in the reader’s mind.’
Jem Calder | Notes on Craft
Jem Calder
‘I wrote in the address bar of my web browser, in spreadsheet cells, in emails I addressed to myself.’ Jem Calder on writing fiction at his day job.
Best Book of 1946: The Years of Anger
Robert Chandler
Robert Chandler on why The Years of Anger by Randall Swingler is the best book of 1946.
Inferno
Catherine Cho
‘My son was eight days shy of his 100-day celebration when I started to see devils in his eyes.’
Catherine Cho’s Inferno is shortlisted for the 2020 Young Writer of the Year Award.
The Death of Distance
Samrat Choudhury
‘It might take only one soldier being shot across the Chinese–Indian border for war to begin. The howitzers, tanks, missiles and fighter jets are lined up, ready and waiting for action.’
All Species Have the Same Life
Emanuele Coccia
‘I have in me the vestiges of an endless series of living beings, all born of other living beings.’
Arbos
Teju Cole
‘I made many pictures of such trees, and each time, some analogy to art would impress itself on me, the more so because of the universally locked museum doors.’
Red Sands
Caroline Crampton
‘They appear against the horizon as the boat slowly sweeps closer into the estuary.’
The Beach
Laura Cumming
An excerpt from On Chapel Sands, which has recently been shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020.
