Explore Essays and memoir
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Best Book of 1959: Mrs Bridge
Sindya Bhanoo
‘When the book was published, my own parents were children in India, then a newly independent nation.’
Best Book of 1978: Who Do You Think You Are?
Emily LaBarge
‘I have read them so often that sometimes I cannot remember what is mine and what is hers’
Best Book of 1998: Symbiotic Planet
Daisy Lafarge
‘Symbiogenesis is horizontal and anarchic, a frenzy of illicit fusions and mergers – energies coming together for mutual benefit.’
Daisy Lafarge on the best book of 1998.
Best Book of 2019: Better Never Than Late
Ukamaka Olisakwe
‘This book is about how to navigate the thorny valley of dead dreams. Some will survive the ordeal; others will tip over the edge, irredeemable.’
Between Light and Storm
Esther Woolfson
‘We’ve always been entwined in life and in death with other creatures, although often too much time has elapsed to be able to interpret with any certainty what some of these symbols and artefacts mean.’
Binyavanga
Pwaangulongii Dauod
‘There are many writers, including myself, who owe their careers to Binyavanga. He was the most generous writer of his generation.’
Pwaangulongii Dauod remembers the late Binyavanga Wainaina.
Border Documents
Arturo Soto
‘The twin cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juárez lie either side of the US–Mexico border.’
Caleb Klaces | Notes on Craft
Caleb Klaces
Caleb Klaces on being inspired by Van Gogh’s third image, found during the X-ray scanning of one of Van Gogh’s early, repainted canvases.
Carolyn
Andrew O'Hagan
‘Where was Denver in all of this, or the wide open road to Mexico, or the woman, hip to the souls of sensitive men, who was played on-screen by Sissy Spacek and later by Kirsten Dunst?’
Andrew O’Hagan remembers Carolyn Cassady, beat writer and widow of Neal Cassady.
Carrot Bread
Annabel Banks
‘A short story is a loose-knit sweater, a trawler’s net, where the spaces and holes are inseparable from the whole.’
Cheating
Ahmet Altan
‘I get into the police car with four officers from the Anti-Terrorism Branch. They are taking me to the prison.’
Clarity
Ruchir Joshi
‘I was close to my own father, which many people are not.’
Ruchir Joshi remembers his son.
