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Chloe Aridjis | Portrait of My Father
Chloe Aridjis
‘My father has always said that he was born twice.’
Into the Cosmos
Chloe Aridjis
‘In those fervently atheist times, it wasn’t God or his angelic messengers who would come forth from the sky, but the cosmonaut.’
Kopfkino
Chloe Aridjis
‘Yet the little white disks with a dent down the middle are no panacea; whenever I take one of these thought guillotines I feel trapped in a grey zone’.
Best Book of 2008: The Alphabet
Rae Armantrout
Rae Armantrout on why Ron Silliman's The Alphabet is the best book of 2008.
Julia Armfield | First Sentence
Julia Armfield
‘A first line is a threat, I think.’ Julia Armfield on the first sentence of her story ‘Longshore Drift’.
Best Book of 1963: The Group
Julia Armfield
‘Cigarettes, lorgnons, eggs benedict, cocktails mixed with maple syrup, long spills down Lanvin suits.’ Julia Armfield on why Mary McCarthy’s The Group is the best book of 1963.
Northern Soul
Simon Armitage
‘I live on the border, between two states. I've lived here all my life, just about, and I know this place like the back of my hand’.
On Rihanna
Alexia Arthurs
‘Rihanna had cut her hair short, and she was no longer being marketed as the Caribbean Beyoncé.’
The Borderlands
Neal Ascherson
‘Here is the forest. Not just a forest, but a puszcza: a Polish word that means a world of trees which have never been felled since the first bands of human beings arrived to hunt here.’
Beirut | Dispatches
Lana Asfour
‘I was determined that this latest crisis wouldn’t keep me out of the country of my birth.’
A Feudal Outpost in Mount Lebanon
Lana Asfour
‘Intelligent, unpredictable, occasionally ruthless, Jumblatt shows that he is still very much in the game.’