Explore Essays and memoir
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Who Killed Tolstoy?
Elif Batuman
‘I walked along the birch-lined alleys of Yasnaya Polyana, looking for clues. Snakes were swimming in the pond, making a rippling pattern. Everything here was a museum.’
Yangdol’s Journey
Manuel Bauer
‘Every year, more than 2,000 Tibetan refugees arrive in Nepal and India seeking asylum. Almost fifty per cent of them are children.’
What Do Women Want?
Devorah Baum
‘What we’re arguing about turns out to be how to speak to each other at all.’
The Gadulka is Burning
Rayko Baychev
‘If they tell you there’s no instrument more thankless than the gadulka, you better believe it.’
How to Stop Your Mother-in-Law from Drowning
Richard Beard
‘This is one of those stories about she and you. She is the mother-in-law. You are the man who duped her daughter, or the woman who ensnared her son.’
Lavande
Ann Beattie
‘It seemed impossible, but probably everyone marries thinking such a thing impossible.’
Anecdotes
Ann Beattie
‘Christine’s hair had begun to dry, and she looked different, with her hair down and her glasses on. Her earnestness made her look younger, and took me back to the bar where we’d sat in Pennsylvania years ago.’
Protestant Boy
Geoffrey Beattie
‘I was going home to Belfast to visit my mother. It was the spring of 1998 and the weather was very good for that time of year.’
Ann Beattie | First Sentence
Ann Beattie
‘Several times I’ve wanted to title something one thing, but have realized or been persuaded it isn’t a good idea.’
Men as Chickens
Geoffrey Beattie
‘She had offered four men £2,500 each to live like battery hens for a week.’
Crossings
Tim Beckett
‘This was the collective trauma of a community discovering, very abruptly, they’d have to uproot their lives.’ Tim Beckett on the ruins of Uranium City.
