Explore Essays and memoir
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On the Island of the Black River
William Atkins
William Atkins visits the remote island of Sakhalin, following in the footsteps of Anton Chekhov.
Starting Out in Chicago
James Atlas
‘Dangling Man was his M.A., Bellow liked to say; The Victim was his Ph.D.‘
Diana Athill
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood on Diana Athill. ‘Diana was admired by all who knew her, and also by all who read her memoirs, for her honesty, her plain but elegant style, her lack of pretenses, and her stoicism in the face of ever-narrowing possibilities.’
Your Birthday Has Come and Gone
Paul Auster
‘For the first time in all the years you had known her, she sounded deranged.’
The Red Notebook
Paul Auster
‘In 1973 I was offered a job as caretaker of a farmhouse in the south of France.’
Memoir by Paul Auster.
It Don’t Mean a Thing
Paul Auster
‘The single inhabitant of an asteroid that orbits around a tertiary moon of Pluto, visible only through the strongest telescope.’
You Remember the Planes
Paul Auster
‘You can’t remember the precise moment when you understood that you were a Jew.’
An essay by Paul Auster.
Heart and Soul in Every Stitch
Tash Aw
‘Where wealth and technology go, culture quickly follows, and soon it became acceptable, even desirable, to express an interest in Japan beyond the mere practicality offered by its products.’
Look East, Look to the Future
Tash Aw
‘It was as if he was consciously trying to fashion an image for what he wanted the country to be: ultra-confident and unapologetic, not just severing all links with our colonial past but sticking a bold middle finger up to it while we strode chest-out into the future.’
On Being French and Chinese
Tash Aw
‘We were trapped in a sort of double prison: by poverty in Europe, and by China and its expectations of us.’
#TeamBaddiel vs #TeamBabel
David Baddiel
‘Social media has allowed everyone in the world to raise their own little flag of self’
The Secret Afterlife of Boats
Anna Badkhen
‘The sea is broken,’ they say. An empty net at night: a drooping lattice of shiny nothingness, a cold and worthless tinsel mesh.
