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Explore Essays and memoir

The B.O.G. Standard

Philip Oltermann

‘Like most northern Europeans, we were dedicated Anglophiles.’

They Always Come in the Night

Dinaw Mengestu

‘Tell them truth. Tell them we are out here dying.’

The Mercies

Ann Patchett

‘Once you knew what God wanted from your life, you would have to be ten different kinds of fool to look the other way.’

One Day I Will Write About This Place

Binyavanga Wainaina

‘We are, it seems, in the middle of nowhere.’

English Hours: Nothing Personal

Paul Theroux

‘England does not have a climate; it has weather, seldom dramatic.’

The Forging of a Writer

Tim Rushby-Smith

‘As a child visiting friends’ houses, I soon realized that our living room was unusual. Not everyone had an entire wall of books, floor to ceiling.’

George Orwell: Diaries

George Orwell

‘A jagged stone skimming across ice makes exactly the same sound as a redshank whistling.’

Colombia | Snapshot

Jaime Manrique

‘Two obsessions dominated my life during adolescence: to become a writer and to find my true love.’

Guatemala | Snapshot

Eduardo Halfon

‘The roads of Guatemala have always been its best and worst theatre.’

El Salvador | Snapshot

Horacio Castellanos Moya

‘Don’t mind the sun that beats leadenly down, or the light that stings their eyes, or the danger that lurks nearby, because that’s what life has always been: a little air gulped down amid the crowd.’

Tropics of Redemption

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera

‘Lest we forget: the novel was invented in Spanish. We entered modern times through the spirit of a novel written in that language.’

Foreword

Valerie Miles & Aurelio Major

The foreword for Granta 113: Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists.

Introducing Andrés Neuman

Roberto Bolaño

‘When I come across these young writers it makes me want to cry.’