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Best Book of 1984: Amalgamemnon

Joanna Walsh

Joanna Walsh on why Christine Brooke-Rose's Amalgamemnon is the best book of 1984.

Best Book of 1970: The Collected Works of Billy the Kid

Callan Wink

Why Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is the best book of 1970.

Specialist

Diane Williams

‘An hour passed. Why not say twenty years?’

To the Ocean

Deb Olin Unferth

‘At the desk they said they encouraged guests not to walk, but she was determined’

Five Things Right Now: Joanna Walsh

Joanna Walsh

Joanna Walsh shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about.

The Landlady

Geling Yan

‘After all, they were landlady and tenant; what right did he have to meddle?’

Hotel Haunting

Joanna Walsh

‘There was a time in my life when I lived in hotels. Around this time, the time I did not spend in hotels was time I did not live.’

Bicske

Joanna Walsh

‘For us, discomfort is a hard feeling. / Almost as hard as hate. / Almost as hard as fear.’

Evie Wyld | Five Things Right Now

Evie Wyld

Evie Wyld shares five things she’s reading, watching and thinking about.

Poem Conveyed

Jillian Weise

‘And now that he is body-less, / he speaks through us. / You could say. Although / I myself have not caught / a Pope.’

Open Water

Deb Olin Unferth

She had already imagined it all, so much so that when she finally did see him, she felt unable to speak.

A Thousand Splendid Stuns

Morwari Zafar

‘More important than anything else that fateful year was the life-defining transcendence of Peter Gabriel.’

Two Poems

Jack Underwood

‘We are nearing the conclusion of this anatomy. / We are strung between the point of ending, and / the point of having started.’

Poor Lucky Kolyvanova

Ludmila Ulitskaya

‘The red girls’ school stood opposite a grey boys’ school, built five years after it as if to proclaim the rational symmetry of the world.’