Explore Essays and memoir
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The Spelling Bee
Neil Steinberg
‘Jacob spells ‘idiosyncratically’ and nods at the ‘That is correct,’ as if to say, ‘Damn right that is correct, lady.’’
Trap. Dominate. Fuck.
Julian Barnes
‘Sceptics maintain that live chess is as enthralling as watching paint dry. Ultra-sceptics reply: unfair to paint'.
Never Let Me Down
Susan J. Miller
‘The statement was the truth of him–not only what he said, but also the fact that he would say it to us, and say it without guilt, without apology, without regret'.
Patricide
Beverly Lowry
‘By now, the shooting is old news, and Rush Springs, Oklahoma, has had its five minutes of notoriety’, Beverly Lowry in 'Patricide'
The Tragedy of Vukovar
David Owen
’The three month siege of Vukovar, in the autumn of 1991, when an average of 5,000 shells a day landed on the city, set a pattern for events in the former Yugoslavia.’
The Fall of Vukovar
Jean Hatzfeld
'Jean Hatzfeld returned to the former Yugoslavia and was severely wounded by gunfire in June 1992'.
Hero of Tiananmen Square
Orville Schell
‘The spring of 1989 was so apocalyptic that at the time it had seemed unthinkable that the year's events would fade or that China would ever be able to forget them.'
Progress in Prague
Ivan Klíma
‘People in the West are aware of the hardship and bewilderment that accompanied the political and economic transformation of central and eastern Europe after 1989.'
Hard Man
Hugh Collins
‘My da, I say, is the famous Wullie Collins. He's the Robin Hood of Scotland. He takes from the rich and gives money to the poor. My da’s a bank robber.’
Blind Rage
Henry John Reid
‘I was born in Dundee on 3 April 1951, of a mother who was not meant to bear more children and a father who had long before disappeared.’
Glasgow Victim
Hugh Barnes
‘I went to Glasgow to live out a fantasy. Its fluid, inconstant, nerve-wrung landscape had a claim upon my imagination.’
Foreign Bodies
Peregrine Hodson
‘We'd reached the end of the journey: a day and a night and then home. Perhaps that was our first mistake. We forgot where we were.’
